Orbit: Poems

flowersThis morning I was walking upstairsfrom the kitchen, carrying yourbeautiful flowers, the flowers youbrought me last night, calla liliesand something else, I am notsure what to call them, white flowers,of course you had no way of knowingit has been years since I boughtwhite ­flowers—­but now you haveand here they are again. I was carryingyour flowers and a coffee cupand a soft yellow handbag and a bookof poems by a Chinese poet, inwhich I had just read the words “comeor go but don’t just stand therein the doorway,” as usual I wascarrying too many things, youwould have laughed if you saw me.It seemed especially importantnot to spill the coffee as I usuallydo, as I turned up the stairs,inside the whorl of the house as ifI were walking up inside the lilies.I do not know how to hold allthe beauty and sorrow of my life.meltwaterA gang of foxes on the wet road, furgaggle, the gutter a Ganges, gravelrutting the glacier’s slur and cant. Old proof,the past can’t solve itself, endlessly drawingits stung logos spirograph. You seethe fox I cannot see; even the childrencan see her, vixen and her babiesdelicately picking their way alongthe white line of the tarmac, the rainrubbing out their shadows. I want youas I want water, rain crocheting mossfrom mist, sulfur on the pines’ crooked limbs,hapless as the selkie who hums to ­herself—­no one believes in her but there she is.faunThe faun you can seeher lariat of bone unfoldingthe faun in your armsher legs buckledmoon-­mouthvelvet, her breath keyed,waterrasping the bridgebarnacles ringing the pilings—­black pearls,the ­faun’s breath spiral,circling your head,the Horn of Africapausing—­digitalis,cinquefoil, starburstpulsingto where we walkedto the end, to what wethought was the end.mirrorMy fate to meet my eyes where I’d meet yours,this early morning streaked with sootmottled where your dreaming hand should putmy hand to rest on your still waking browjibing the night’s ­storm-­battered prowheaven’s third power, that makes another fastbe one of two, then, the scow safely ­moored—­(eyes shut) wish that was for me first be last.orbitje vais voir l’ombre que tu devins—­mallarméThat evening when you were standing bythe shelves and song came back to you aftera long silence, never broken even oncebut for a shadow crossing your path, a murmurof some ­long-­ago breath, speeches as nursery rhymes,St. Crispin or the children chanting, please you,night and day, or the stained glass of the bayas it opened for you when the tide roseto meet the twilight. But never asking for you,who had become a bystander, salt cakedby salt to a pillar and even then slipshodwith the truth. That swerving eel whose charge switchesthe current is you, not another, slicktail—­remorse—­caught in its own mouth.*The house a shell and not a shell. Dreaming,I stop at each turn of the stair, ­kitewinder, the balustrade’s tipped ladder trackinginfinity, each door a lid shut tightmy damp snail foot, proboscis, wrack fishtail.How can I swim up so many stories?On the landing, furs. Gloves. A walking stick,Grandfather in his overcoat, clearinghis throat, the winter smell of carnations.I tried to write it down but lost. Missed tread.Footfall of what the dead said. Don’t, or do?All ear, I have no hands. Lunatic hero,the hermit crab who keeps me companyturns me over, nebulae, on my back.*All day a playing card at the kitchen stair’s hairpin,seven diamonds, each red gem a step, Mnemosyne’sdaughters, ­sun-­sprockets, whirring to make you listen.On a sequined pillow from Bombay, our Una’spapoose doll sits up beneath The Bookof Justice, a ­pop‑up fugue whose page unfoldsa toothpick temple, each strut a reliquary,its cellophane banner sheer petroleum.By midnight, the card picked up: tears, ­doom-­bringer,futility: the owl asking its questionto the barking of dogs. Rusks and cardamom.If Chronos comes to Hecate’s door, what useis squabbling? ­Yew-­eyed, the cat mews the stair,her footprints red after she steps on glass.*Dusk. Bee’s Sea of Monsters butts the ­chair—­its shiny cover wreathed with lashing tailswhile eight steps up, the ­kite winder, litteredwith gilt ribbons, sails into Whitehall’s ­helter-­skelter. I sit “on the stares.” Fight or flight?Downstairs, on pink ice, powdered gingerspackles the Victorian ­mold’s flutes with gold,red lily pollen, prodded, makes us allMacbeth. Tonight’s story? Trawling for loot,wan Elnora, “A Girl of the Limberlost,”pulls from her torn pocket a scrimshaw boy,a locket, a painted ­top—­each butterflyshe nets a flustered treble note. We’re notgood at being good, nor being ­“good-­at.”*The fireplace log breathes fire, pooled amber,bejeweled topaz lighting a goblet. The airis sap. Dragon, the pine log shatters toa monkey face, two knots for eyes, ­then—­gone.What else eats itself alive? The child, noteating, rattles her shark spine, wind chimesfor Belsen’s banging door that only shuts.North, the smudged mill towns carbonize, each onedilated, black iris beneath the day’scloud-­muddied brow, horizon’s dorsal finsnow grey, as if the flooded dawn held dusk,the shark’s inamorata sunset’s skinnedknuckle try at holding ­fast—­gunpowdersky that drinks smoke from an hourglass.*Each one Echo (spitting image of Narcissusin diminuendo), the seven sisters playbridge on their ­upside-­down card table,their meteor ­go-­cart running on a firecracker.Their swaged tablecloth is the snow sky settlingon the dark town. Who could do wrong? The eyeof the world opens and shuts. Rememberthe legs under the table, silk and suede,pine bark, sharp hooves, clattering? We spokein whispers, hardly ­breathing—­house of cardswhere every breath disturbs the dreaming portraits.Shuffle the deck. The prince’s tiny twitchingdog is dreaming us: dust and ore, secret, alive,animal, just past vision’s humming line.*Why can’t I want anything I want? But,Cosmo, I do. Posthumous, our lovesoutlive us: hardtack, lemons, sassafras,soap-­skiff floating in the claw foot tub,the windlass a girl blowing bubbles.Would that we’d known? A whitened cloudof peppered moths, the children’s old de teumdim the lamp and singe the too light eveningand turn the sky’s slashed moiré tangerine.I bartered forty summers for black ­pearls—­the cat’s black tail, scorch mark, rounds the kickedshut door. On ­Wings Neck two deer eat and graze.I slip and water slops the stairs. Where I ammet is meat. What we knew we know was there.*The light through the wicker chair makes ­star-­crosseddiamonds on the coffee cup, each waterycrystal quartz alit tells lies or makesthings up. What will I do with my life?Rolled up the map of Angers—­somewhere ­else—­resists, its antique blue print paper foldsan origami house on fire, its routesand rivers set ablaze, the blown up ­center—­court, steeple, winding ­stair—­a burnt outcharcoal spyhole. Between the lines? Inthe kitchen of the dragon king, the hooked carp,speaking, has one wish: life as we know it.Know-­nothing, the curling paper serpentsheds his printed skin but leaves me mine.*Tea-­smoked duck on a sugar stick, atthe restaurant where in the dream I changedtables and changed tables. Everything M. gave mewas a ­box—­a glass box with pink transparent sides,a cloisonné parfumerie.Do you want these boots? the dream said. I walked for milesthrough racks of shoes, among the voodoo ­dolls—­but those are Martin’s, I said. But who is Martin?Then ­woke—­I am half turned ­away—­to rain,and ­didn’t think, a meal ­half-­cooked, the stove aflame,duck legs puckered running red, the cat left out all nightdrenched and ­I—­you don’t think, who have failedeveryone I love, my hair a fright wigmy heart a bat that bangs its head.*Shellacked with ice, the street a cracked snow globewhose magic pool drips serum. Mystery or venom?Reading aloud in our ­cocoa-­cum-­coffee cloud,Miss Stanton, stepdaughter of Woking, Surrey,drops her veil. It’s not sorrow she feels, but terror,then ­comedy—­the bull butting his mazeof twigs, the baboon rattling the bedroom door.Is love labor? Pacem, ­heart-­ease. Our shadowsslip. In the ashram’s ­hand-­thrown toffee bowl(our guru has a sweet tooth, he likes M&Ms)the narcissus, ­one-­eyed, strains againstits makeshift chopstick stake to bloom. My pen,leaking, blots and counts to ten, its indigodilation drawing water rings on the ceiling.*Ships’ time, the East River’s septet of islands,each triangle mast raised to a tin star.The wind settles. Scant block from the cold bank,my love, ­bell-­ringer at ten, at five, star-hive,diminishes to a speck, the ­wind’s fuguetripling her internal rhyme. That watermarkwhite quartz I kept, Mab’s stone, whose rippleswhet the air her horses reined, her rune her wand,your eye for ­mine—­your taloned verses heldsmall birds in air until they sang. When youturned to speak I bit my tongue and thoughtnot mine. Come to me now. Heaven’s geometryis hesitation’s proof; the triangle’s sharpnote—­tin hitting ­crystal—­makes us stop.*The cranberry ­bogs—­plush seats at La Fenice,but the sky’s aria after weeks of rain?Bee sting, a swarm of buttercups, mercurymonogrammed with fever. Three wishes?Even the simple know to ask for ­more—­the ­baby’s hand a star, the blindedmeasuring snake a Möbius strip. Whom did Clothostrangle but herself? Too many thingsare possible in this world, Lachesis.Fall is summer’s bronze wing, it soars, then dips.Even Atropos is ­unpredictable—­a knife makes a fiddle of a breastbone,a torn field mouse flicking rubies. My lifebe my life, scarecrow punting at the moon.*Transit of mist, the blistered, peeling ­trees—­ice in the doorway makes us slipand grab the brass knob that will and will notturn. To choose a book is to ­choose—­what?Mrs. Dalloway, by the telephone,steps out and shuts the door, the sky above Hyde Parkrickracked with clouds. Slight wind. Boot lifted abovea rainbow puddle. Do you remember?We took a stick and twirled the gutter’s oilypond until the colors parted, Joseph’scoat, ragtag, the early sunset’s bagatelle.Love, if I could look at ­you—­our life bleedsinto every corner; the sky’s lavender lozengewindow, future tense, stores everything we do.*What rainbow amounts to anything?The bracelet’s lanyard on my ­wrist—­wovenmanacle, one a summer, for ­mama—­faint blush of mold on the sky’s scud rim,the horizon a bird blind high above Longnookall bluff, the dune bowling down meteors,its fatal hollows scored by falling timber,spawn ghostwriting the ­low-­tide mark.Where are my happy loves? Right from wrong,the simple past, asperity a roughVenus, a mermaid and her twin sealself, the bloodred wax that stamps the lettera welt on her fern tail, an x markingthe spot where the light was.summerfor Max RitvoiThree weeks until summer and ­then—­what?Midsummer’s gravity makes our heads spineach hour a gilt thread spool, winding throughthe second hand, gossamer fin de semaine,fin de siècle, fin slicing the waterof the ­too-­cold-­to-­breathe bay, molten silver,then receding as if we ­hadn’t seen it,sultan of so long, see you tomorrow.Dead man’s fingers, lady’s slippers, a sealwho swims too ­close—­too close for what? The needleswerves. Our element chooses us. Waterfire, air, ­earth—­the rosebush, Lazarus,hot to the touch, gold reticulate, is ­love’sbull’s-­eye, attar rising from the rafters.iiIf I could make it stop I would. Was itthe crocodile Hook feared, or was it time?The ­hour’s arrow never misses, the gnomon,glinting, cuts the ­Day-­Glo sun to pieces.In the ultraviolet palace of the Mermaid Kinghis girls wear scallop shells, one for each yearon their turquoise tails. Even they have birthdays,why not you? Death, hold your ponies with onehand, and stay awhile. On my desk, the ­lion’spaw lamp scavenged from the winter beach,its ­poppy-­colored shells like the lit scalesof an enormous Trojan fish . . . ​teeth chattering,its metronome time bomb tsk ­tsk—­when is giving up not giving in?iii (child’s pose)When Alice pulled the stopper, did she getsmaller, or did the world get larger? Inthe bath, your nose bleeds a bouquet of tissueroses, white stained ­red—­adolescenceis to overdo it, but ­really? Thirtystories up, our ­birds’-­eye view isthe hummingbird tattoo on your bare head,wings beating, too tiny and too big to see,your ­wire-­thin profile drawn upright, bonesdaring the air, marionette running onthe brain’s dark marrow, tungsten for the fireflies’freeze tag. Due south, the Chrysler Building’s gauntletholds a lit syringe. We do and do not change.Let me go from here to anywhere.ivThat’s it for now. And so we turn the pageyour poems standing in for you, ­or—­that’snot it, ­what’s left of you, mediatingbetween what you’d call mind and bodyand I, by now biting my lip, call grief,the lines netting the enormous airlike silver threads, the tails of Mr. Edwards’sspiders with which they sail from ledge to branch“as when the soul feels jarred by nervous thoughtsand catch on air.” Pace. Your trousers wornto mouse fur dragging on the stoop, your hipprongs barely holding them aloft, the pasta phaeton, its sunlit reins buckingat before and after, but there is no after.vOr is there? For once, when you rock backon the chair I don’t say don’t do that,forelegs lifting, hooves pawing the ­air—­Every departure’s an elopement,the shy cat fiddling while Rome sizzles,spoon mirror flipping us upside down.Son of Helios, rainbow fairy lightsblazing, when one light goes out they allgo out. At the top of the dune, the thornycrowns of buried trees, their ­teeter-­totterbranches a candelabra for the spiders’silvery halo of threads. What a terriblebusiness it is, saying what you mean.Speak, sky, the horizon scored by talons.