SIX YEARS LATER

M.B.

So long had life together been that now

the second of January fell again

on Tuesday, making her astonished brow

lift like a windshield wiper in the rain,

              so that her misty sadness cleared, and showed

              a cloudless distance waiting up the road.

So long had life together been that once

the snow began to fall, it seemed unending;

that, lest the flakes should make her eyelids wince,

I’d shield them with my hand, and they, pretending

              not to believe that cherishing of eyes,

              would beat against my palm like butterflies.

So alien had all novelty become

that sleep’s entanglements would put to shame

whatever depths the analysts might plumb;

that when my lips blew out the candle flame,

              her lips, fluttering from my shoulder, sought

              to join my own, without another thought.

So long had life together been that all

that tattered brood of papered roses went,

and a whole birch grove grew upon the wall,

and we had money, by some accident,

              and tonguelike on the sea, for thirty days,

              the sunset threatened Turkey with its blaze.

So long had life together been without 

books, chairs, utensils–only that ancient bed–

that the triangle, before it came about,

had been a perpendicular, the head

              of some acquaintance hovering above

              two points which had been coalesced by love.

So long had life together been that she

and I, with our joint shadows, had composed

a double door, a door which, even if we

were lost in work or sleep, was always closed:

              somehow its halves were split and we went right

              through them into the future, into night.

Epitaph for a Centaur

To say that he was unhappy is either to say too much

or too little: depending on who’s the audience.

Still, the smell he’d give off was a bit too odious,

and his canter was also quite hard to match.

He said, They meant just a monument, but something went astray:

the womb? the assembly line? the economy?

Or else, the war never happened, they befriended the enemy,

and he was left as it is, presumably to portray

Intransigence, Incompatibility–that sort of thing which proves

not so much one’s uniqueness or virtue, but probability.

For years, resembling a cloud, he wandered in olive groves,

marveling at one-leggedness, the mother of immobility.

Learned to lie to himself, and turned it into an art

for want of a better company, also to check his sanity.

And he died fairly young–because his animal part

turned out to be less durable than his humanity.