Let Evening Come Read online

  got to be inside out? There must be​

  a trickster in the hamper, a backward,​

  unclean spirit.

  The clothes—the thicker​

  things—may not get dry by dusk.

  The days are getting shorter. . . .

  You’ll laugh, but I feel it—​

  some power has gone from the sun.

  Geranium

  How many years did I lug it, pale and leggy,​

  onto the porch for the summer? There its stems​

  turned thick, its leaves curly and dark,​

  and it bloomed almost immediately.

  Before first frost I’d bring it back inside​

  where it yellowed like the soles of the feet​

  of someone very old. Its flowers fell apart.

  One spring I cut back all but one shoot,​

  and that I tied against a bamboo stake​

  to make a long straight stem.

  Then I pinched out the new growth repeatedly​

  until I had a full, round ball on a stick,​

  like topiary at Versailles. It pleased me well;​

  its flowers were salmon pink.

  I fed it fish emulsion, bonemeal, wood​

  ashes; mulched it with cocoa pod hulls,​

  gave it a Tuscan terra-cotta pot.

  It was my nightingale, my goose, my golden​

  child. We drank from the same cup.

  After the night’s downpour I find the top​

  snapped off, lying on the ground like a rack​

  of antlers. Not even wilted yet—I’ve come​

  upon the fresh disaster. ... Like Beethoven’s​

  head its head had grown too large.

  Cultural Exchange

  A postcard arrives from a friend​

  visiting the Great Wall of China.

  “Life couldn’t be better,” says M.

  I was there once, in March. Unkind wind​

  bore down from the north. Mongolia . . .​

  how steep it is! In places even presidents​

  are forced to drop down on all fours.

  On the way back to Beijing​

  our embassy car rushed wildly​

  through a succession of hamlets, forcing​

  bicycles off the road, dooryard​

  fowl to flap and fluster, and from​

  grandmother, bundled in her blue jacket​

  to take the pale sun, such a look!

  Tired? Tired was not the word.

  Getting sleepy in the warm car​

  I considered the Wall, the scale​

  of enterprise. A lock of hair had fallen​

  across my eyes. At last my brain​

  convinced my hand to move it.

  That night I was honored by a banquet​

  in a room so cold I could see my breath.

  Homesick

  My clothes and hair smell stale,​

  and more than once I have slept in my coat​

  on trains that crashed past isolated stations​

  where magnolias bloom all night​

  beside dusty platform benches.

  Twice I bought dried fish rolled​

  in cellophane, thinking it was pastry.

  Leaving the pebbled Buddhist garden​

  such a dreadful languor overtook me;

  I could hardly step over the threshold.

  The monks were eating bean curd

  fixed eleven different ways

  and drinking bowls of frothy bitter green tea.

  Oh my bed, and the dear dust under it!

  Bath towels that don’t smell like miso soup;

  my own little dog, one ear up

  and one ear down, and a speaker of English;

  the teller at the village bank

  who never asks to see my passport. . .

  “Yes,” I’ll say, “we had a wonderful time.

  We slept on pillows filled with cottonseed,​

  ate cuttlefish, dried squid, and black bean​

  paste, and drank pink laurel wine.”

  Summer: 6:00 A.M.

  From the shadowy upstairs bedroom​

  of my mother-in-laws house in Hamden​

  I hear the neighbors’ children waking.

  “Ahhhhhhhh,” says the infant, not​

  unhappily. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!”​

  replies the toddler to his mother,​

  who must have forbidden something.

  It is hot already at this hour​

  and the houses are wholly open.

  If she is cross with the child​

  anyone with ears will hear.

  The slap of sprinkler water​

  hitting the sidewalk and street,​

  and the husband’s deliberate footfalls​

  receding down the drive . . .

  His Japanese sedan matches the house.​

  Beige, brown . . . Yesterday he washed it,​

  his arm thrust deep into something​

  that looked like a sheepskin oven mitt.

  His wife had put the babies​

  in the shallow plastic wading​

  pool, and she took snapshots, trying​

  repeatedly to get both boys to look.

  The older one’s wail rose

  and matched the pitch of the cicada

  in a nearby tree. Why

  is the sound of a spoon on a plate​

  next door a thing so desolate?

  I think of the woman pouring a glass of juice​

  for the three-year-old, and watching him​

  spill it, knowing he must spill it,​

  seeing the ineluctable downward course​

  of the orange-pink liquid, the puddle​

  swell on the kitchen​

  floor beside the child’s shoe.

  Walking Notes: Hamden, Connecticut

  Wearing only her nightdress

  with a white sweater thrown over her shoulders,

  a woman stands at the curb, watching

  with a look of love and patience

  as her aged poodle snuffles at a candy wrapper.

  I see her as her husband of forty years​

  sees her: hair tied back by a broad, pink​

  ribbon, eyes swollen with sleep.

  My daily walk takes me past a house​

  where roses scramble lustily​

  up the trellises, a Dorothy Perkins​

  and a climbing Peace.

  The house where two dentists, Dr. Charles Molloy​

  and Dr. Everett Condon, drill and pack . . .

  The boys in the neighborhood call Dr. Condon​

  Dr. Condom. They know all about such things​

  though their parents have told them little​

  about sex, leaving that to luck, or the lack​

  of it, or lurid films on hygiene in gym class.

  The girl next door, a real beauty, her long black​

  curls drawn up with combs like someone in Turgenev,​

  waters the lawn, not thoroughly. Her father​

  is about to be indicted for racketeering.

  For a long time they didn’t mow. The wind​

  carried weed seeds into the neighbors’ yards.

  Everyone was irate.. . .Then suddenly​

  he mowed, and now she waters listlessly.

  Last Days

  Over the orchard a truly black cloud appeared.​

  Then horizontal rain began, and apples fell​

  before their time. Leaves blew​

  in phalanxes along the ground. Doors​

  opened and closed of their own accord. The lights​

  went out, but then thought better of it.

  So I sat with her in a room made small​

  by the paraphernalia of the mortally ill.

  Among ranks of brown bottles from the pharmacy​

  a hymnbook lay open on the chest of drawers:​

  “Saf
ely Through Another Week.” Indifferent,​

  a housefly lit on her blue-white brow.

  Looking at Stars

  The God of curved space, the dry​

  God, is not going to help us, but the son​

  whose blood spattered​

  the hem of his mother’s robe.

  At the Dime Store

  Since I saw him last his teeth have gone.

  The gaps draw my eyes, and like Saint​

  Paul I give way: that very thing I would​

  not do, I do. He notices, abashed.

  Most of one summer he was around, coming​

  by seven each morning with his rascally look​

  to build a new wing and replace the old​

  north sill. Sometimes he’d disappear for a day​

  or a week. There was trouble at home​

  and on his lunch hour he’d call—just over​

  the town line and so long distance—​

  thinking we couldn’t hear or wouldn’t​

  care. This was years ago.

  When I encounter him again in the aisles​

  we both grin shyly. His boy, tall suddenly,​

  and bulky, not built like his father at all,​

  joins him at the checkout.

  They’ve got an aquarium in their cart.

  At last the job was finished. All but​

  taking up the piles of extra shingles,​

  sawhorses, and lumber from the back​

  yard. Weeks passed. I called. Yes,​

  his wife assured me, he’d be coming by.

  And finally one day he did

  while I was up in town having a filling

  replaced. When I got home, shaky​

  and feeling mussed, I saw that everything​

  of substance was gone, leaving only​

  white rectangular spaces on the lawn.

  Let Evening Come

  Let the light of late afternoon

  shine through chinks in the barn, moving

  up the bales as the sun moves down.

  Let the cricket take up chafing​

  as a woman takes up her needles​

  and her yarn. Let evening come.

  Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned​

  in long grass. Let the stars appear​

  and the moon disclose her silver horn.

  Let the fox go back to its sandy den.

  Let the wind die down. Let the shed​

  go black inside. Let evening come.

  To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop​

  in the oats, to air in the lung​

  let evening come.

  Let it come, as it will, and don’t​

  be afraid. God does not leave us​

  comfortless, so let evening come.

  With the Dog at Sunrise

  Although we always come this way​

  I never noticed before that the poplars​

  growing along the ravine​

  shine pink in the light of winter dawn.

  What am I going to say​

  in my letter to Sarah—a widow​

  at thirty-one, alone in the violence​

  of her grief, sleepless,​

  and utterly cast down?

  I look at the lithe, pink trees more carefully,​

  remembering Stephen, the photographer.

  With the hunger of two I take them in.

  Perhaps I can tell her that.

  The dog furrows his brow while pissing long​

  and thoughtfully against an ancient hemlock.​

  The snow turns the saffron of a monk’s robe​

  and acrid steam ascends.

  Searching for God is the first thing and the last,​

  but in between such trouble, and such pain.

  Far up in the woods where no one goes​

  deer take their ease under the great​

  pines, nose to steaming nose. . . .