Grace, Fallen from
A MOMENT
Maybe it’s common, this sort
of first meeting. But once, before a guest house
in Germany, the friend
of a friend to come by, and dinner—
that’s it, we’ll go to dinner, have the famous
spargel, that rare white asparagus, only
in May, our evening pre-arranged by phone,
by email. I need to say again we
hadn’t met. Outside I stood
at the door, it being spring, every tree
gloriously poised. And a stranger,
another woman, she too waiting
but near the curb, looking
this way and that, attentive to traffic, hours
from dusk because we were north,
near the sea. And tall, she was towering,
older than I was, hugely
made-up, such meticulous work
behind that elegant finish. Then the friend
of my friend—could that be?—his
parking, his pulling himself
out of that tiny car.
Please understand. I’m usually
right there rushing in, because the world
requires that, loves the quickening
of that. But I was
or I wasn’t. Or I was small
but there is smaller. To my left, a door.
Some tree flowering at my right.
I watched as he
to that woman said my name
so charmingly, a question, tilting
his head, are you . . . ? sorry to disturb,
are you . . . ? And in that pause—
her vague focusing on him, her loose
finding him now—I leaned forward,
simply curious: what
would she say? smile? yes? tell him yes?
So thread breaks. So water in a glass
clouds and maybe it clears.
So I waited, giving up
everything, to anyone,
just like that.
STILL LIFE
Someone arranged them in 1620.
Someone found the rare lemon and paid
a lot and neighbored it next
to the plain pear, the plain
apple of the lost garden, the glass
of wine, set down mid-sip—
don’t drink it, someone said, it’s for
the painting. And the rabbit skull—
whose idea was that? There had been
a pistol but someone was told, no,
put that away, into the box with a key
though the key had been
misplaced now for a year. The artist
wanted light too, for the shadows.
So the table had to be moved. Somewhere
I dreamt the diary entry
on this, reading the impossible
Dutch quite well, thank you, and I can
translate it here, someone writing
it is spring, after all, and Herr Müller
wants a window of it in the painting, almost
a line of poetry, I thought even then,
in the dream, impressed
with that “spring after all,” that
“window of it” especially, how sweet
and to the point it came over
into English with no effort at all
as I slept through the night. It was heavy,
that table. Two workers were called
from the east meadow to lift
and grunt and carry it
across the room, just those
few yards. Of course one of them
exaggerated the pain in his shoulder.
Not the older, the younger man.
No good reason
to cry out like that. But this
was art. And he did, something
sharp and in the air that
one time. All of them turning then,
however slightly. And there he was,
eyes closed, not much
more than a boy, before
the talk of beauty
started up again.
NEW PAPER
under a pen isn’t
snow. I see the real thing
out my window piled up
in cold sunlight. It just isn’t.
Isn’t a lapse
of anyone’s memory though
that might help me sleep. I’m anyone
at night.
New paper getting inked up
already with words. Revision: inked up
already with these words.
But it is, it is
a cold war movie
about Russia. Lots of tundra, and little
mustached figures bundled up
in the corner, waiting
to do something. On skis.
Or dog sleds. A throw-back. Before
the Revolution? Before the Revolution.
Or not. I can’t make it out
for the snow locked
back in that theater,
voices that blast
the eardrum
straight, such would-be