MOONLESS NIGHT - Louise Glück

A lady weeps at a dark window.

Must we say what it is? Can’t we simply say

a personal matter? It’s early summer;

next door the Lights are practicing klezmer music.

A good night: the clarinet is in tune.

As for the lady--she’s going to wait forever;

there’s no point in watching longer.

After awhile, the streetlight goes out.

But is waiting forever

always the answer? Nothing

is always the answer; the answer

depends on the story.

Such a mistake to want

clarity above all things. What’s

a single night, especially

one like this, now so close to ending?

On the other side, there could be anything,

all the joy in the world, the stars fading,

the streetlight becoming a bus stop.

New World - Louise Glück

As I saw it,

all my mother's life, my father

held her down, like

lead strapped to her ankles.

She was

buoyant by nature;

she wanted to travel,

go to theater, go to museums.

What he wanted

was to lie on the couch

with the Times

over his face,

so that death, when it came,

wouldn't seem a significant change.

In couples like this,

where the agreement

is to do things together,

it's always the active one

who concedes, who gives.

You can't go to museums

with someone who won't

open his eyes.

I thought my father's death

would free my mother.

In a sense, it has:

she takes trips, looks at

great art. But she's floating.

Like some child's balloon

that gets lost the minute

it isn't held.

Or like an astronaut

who somehow loses the ship

and has to drift in space

knowing, however long it lasts,

this is what's left of being alive: she's free

in that sense.

Without relation to earth.

Cousins - Louise Glück

My son’s very graceful; he has perfect balance.

He’s not competitive, like my sister’s daughter.

Day and night, she’s always practicing.

Today, it’s hitting softballs into the copper beech,

retrieving them, hitting them again.

After a while, no one even watches her.

If she were any stronger, the tree would be bald.

My son won’t play with her; he won’t even ride bicycles with her.

She accepts that; she’s used to playing by herself.

The way she sees it, it isn’t personal:

whoever won’t play doesn’t like losing.

It’s not that my son’s inept, that he doesn’t do things well.

I’ve watched him race: he’s natural, effortless—

right from the first, he takes the lead.

And then he stops. It’s as though he was born rejecting

the solitude of the victor.

My sister’s daughter doesn’t have that problem.

She may as well be first; she’s already alone.

Mutable Earth - Louise Glück

Are you healed or do you only think you're healed?

I told myself

from nothing

nothing could be taken away.

But can you love anyone yet?

When I feel safe, I can love.

But will you touch anyone?

I told myself

if I had nothing

the world couldn't touch me.

In the bathtub, I examine my body.

We're supposed to do that.

And your face too?

Your face in the mirror?

I was vigilant: when I touched myself

I didn't feel anything.

Were you safe then?

I was never safe, even when I was most hidden.

Even then I was waiting.

So you couldn't protect yourself?

The absolute

erodes; the boundary, the wall

around the self erodes.

If I was waiting I had been

invaded by time.

But do you think you're free?

I think I recognize the patterns of my nature.

But do you think you're free?

I had nothing

and I was still changed.

Like a costume, my numbness

was taken away. Then

hunger was added.

Mirror Image - Louise Glück

Tonight I saw myself in the dark window as

the image of my father, whose life

was spent like this,

thinking of death, to the exclusion

of other sensual matters,

so in the end that life

was easy to give up, since

it contained nothing: even

my mother's voice couldn't make him

change or turn back

as he believed

that once you can't love another human being

you have no place in the world.

Animals - Louise Glück

My sister and I reached

the same conclusion:

the best way

to love us was to not

spend time with us.

It seemed that

we appealed

chiefly to strangers.

We had good clothes, good

manners in public.

In private, we were

always fighting. Usually

the big one finished

sitting on her little one

and pinching her.

The little one

bit: in forty years

she never learned

the advantage in not

leaving a mark.

The parents

had a credo: they didn't

believe in anger.

The truth was, for different reasons,

they couldn't bring themselves

to inflict pain. You should only hurt

something you can give

your whole heart to. They preferred

tribunals: the child

most in the wrong could choose

her own punishment.

My sister and I

never became allies,

never turned on our parents.

We had

other obsessions: for example,

we both felt there were

too many of us

to survive.

We were like animals

trying to share a dry pasture.

Between us, one tree, barely

strong enough to sustain

a single life.

We never moved

our eyes from each other

nor did either touch

one thing that could

feed her sister.

PARABLE OF FAITH - Louise Glück

Now, in twilight, on the palace steps

the king asks forgiveness of his lady.

He is not

duplicitous; he has tried to be

true to the moment; is there another way of being

true to the self?

The lady

hides her face, somewhat

assisted by the shadows. She weeps

for her past; when one has a secret life,

one's tears are never explained.

Yet gladly would the king bear

the grief of his lady: his

is the generous heart,

in pain as in joy.

Do you know

what forgiveness means? It means

the world has sinned, the world

must be pardoned—

Lamium - Louise Glück

This is how you live when you have a cold heart.

As I do: in shadows, trailing over cool rock,

under the great maple trees.

The sun hardly touches me.

Sometimes I see it in early spring, rising very far away.

Then leaves grow over it, completely hiding it. I feel it

glinting through the leaves, erratic,

like someone hitting the side of a glass with a metal spoon.

Living things don't all require

light in the same degree. Some of us

make our own light: a silver leaf

like a path no one can use, a shallow

lake of silver in the darkness under the great maples.

But you know this already.

You and the others who think

you live for truth and, by extension, love

all that is cold.

Rainy Morning - Louise Glück

You don't love the world.

If you loved the world you'd have

images in your poems.

John loves the world. He has

a motto: judge not

lest ye be judged. Don't

argue this point

on the theory it isn't possible

to love what one refuses

to know: to refuse

speech is not

to suppress perception.

Look at John, out in the world,

running even on a miserable day

like today. Your

staying dry is like the cat's pathetic

preference for hunting dead birds: completely

consistent with your tame spiritual themes,

autumn, loss, darkness, etc.

We can all write about suffering

with our eyes closed. You should show people

more of yourself; show them your clandestine

passion for red meat.

Witchgrass - Louise Glück

Something

comes into the world unwelcome

calling disorder, disorder—

If you hate me so much

don’t bother to give me

a name: do you need

one more slur

in your language, another

way to blame

one tribe for everything—

as we both know,

if you worship

one god, you only need

one enemy—

I’m not the enemy.

Only a ruse to ignore

what you see happening

right here in this bed,

a little paradigm

of failure. One of your precious flowers

dies here almost every day

and you can’t rest until

you attack the cause, meaning

whatever is left, whatever

happens to be sturdier

than your personal passion—

It was not meant

to last forever in the real world.

But why admit that, when you can go on

doing what you always do,

mourning and laying blame,

always the two together.

I don’t need your praise

to survive. I was here first,

before you were here, before

you ever planted a garden.

And I’ll be here when only the sun and moon

are left, and the sea, and the wide field.

I will constitute the field.

The Untrustworthy Speaker - Louise Glück

Don't listen to me; my heart's been broken.

I don't see anything objectively.

I know myself; I've learned to hear like a psychiatrist.

When I speak passionately,

that's when I'm least to be trusted.

It's very sad, really: all my life I've been praised

for my intelligence, my powers of language, of insight.

In the end, they're wasted--

I never see myself,

standing on the front steps, holding my sister's hand.

That's why I can't account

for the bruises on her arm, where the sleeve ends.

In my own mind, I'm invisible: that's why I'm dangerous.

People like me, who seem selfless,

we're the cripples, the liars;

we're the ones who should be factored out

in the interest of truth.

When I'm quiet, that's when the truth emerges.

A clear sky, the clouds like white fibers.

Underneath, a little gray house, the azaleas

red and bright pink.

If you want the truth, you have to close yourself

to the older daughter, block her out:

when a living thing is hurt like that,

in its deepest workings,

all function is altered.

That's why I'm not to be trusted.

Because a wound to the heart

is also a wound to the mind.

Trillium - Louise Gluck

When I woke up I was in a forest. The dark

seemed natural, the sky through the pine trees

thick with many lights.

I knew nothing; I could do nothing but see.

And as I watched, all the lights of heaven

faded to make a single thing, a fire

burning through the cool firs.

Then it wasn't possible any longer

to stare at heaven and not be destroyed.

Are there souls that need

death's presence, as I require protection?

I think if I speak long enough

I will answer that question, I will see

whatever they see, a ladder

reaching through the firs, whatever

calls them to exchange their lives--

Think what I understand already.

I woke up ignorant in a forest;

only a moment ago, I didn't know my voice

if one were given to me

would be so full of grief, my sentences

like cries strung together.

I didn't even know I felt grief

until that word came, until I felt

rain streaming from me.

Telemachus' Guilt - Louise Glück

Patience of the sort my mother

practiced on my father

(which in his self-

absorption he mistook

for tribute though it was in fact

a species of rage--didn't he

ever wonder why he was

so blocked in expressing

his native abandon?): it infected

my childhood. Patiently

she fed me; patiently

she supervised the kindly

slaves who attended me, regardless

of my behavior, an assumption

I tested with increasing

violence. It seemed clear to me

that from her perspective

I didn't exist, since

my actions had

no power to disturb her: I was

the envy of my playmates.

In the decades that followed

I was proud of my father

for staying away

even if he stayed away for

the wrong reasons;

I used to smile

when my mother wept.

I hope now she could

forgive that cruelty; I hope

she understood how like

her own coldness it was,

a means of remaining

separate from what

one loves deeply.

Void - Louise Glück

I figured out why you won’t buy furniture.

You won’t buy furniture because you’re depressed.

I’ll tell you what’s wrong with you: you’re not

gregarious. You should

look at yourself; the only time you’re totally happy

is when you cut up a chicken.

Why can’t we talk about what I want to talk about?

Why do you always change the subject?

You hurt my feelings. I do not mistake

reiteration for analysis.

You should take one of those chemicals,

maybe you’d write more.

Maybe you have some kind of void syndrome.

You know why you cook? Because

you like control. A person who cooks is a person who likes

to create debt.

Actual people! Actual human beings

sitting on our chairs in our living room!

I’ll tell you what: I’ll learn

bridge.

Don’t think of them as guests, think of them

as extra chickens. You’d like it.

If we had more furniture

you’d have more control.