moonbeam

 by louise gluck, from the seven ages

 

the mist rose with a little sound. like a thud. 

which was the heart beating. and the sun rose, briefly diluted.

and after what seemed years, it sank again

and twilight washed over the shore and deepened there. 

and from out of nowhere lovers came, 

people who still had bodies and hearts. who still had 

arms, legs, mouths, although by day they might be

housewives and businessmen.

the same night also produced people like ourselves.

you are like me, whether or not you admit it.

unsatisfied, meticulous. and your hunger is not for experience

but for understanding, as though it could be had in the abstract.

then it's daylight again and the world goes back to normal.

the lovers smooth their hair; the moon resumes its hollow existence.

and the beach belongs again to mysterious birds

soon to appear on postage stamps.

but what of our memories, the memories of those who depend on images?

do they count for nothing?

the mist rose, taking back proof of love.

without which we have only the mirror, you and i.

~nobel prize winner~

💙 

the seven ages by louise gluck

 

in my first dream the world appeared

the salt, the bitter, the forbidden, the sweet

in my second i descended

 

i was human, i couldn't just see a thing

beast that i am

 

i had to touch, to contain it

 

i hid in the groves,

i worked in the fields until the fields were bare --

 

time

that will never come again --

the dry wheat bound, caskets

of figs and olives

 

i even loved a few times in my disgusting human way

 

and like everyone i called that accomplishment

erotic freedom,

absurd as it seems

 

the wheat gathered and stored, the last

fruit dried: time

 

that is hoarded, that is never used,

does it also end?

 

in my first dream the world appeared

the sweet, the forbidden

but there was no garden, only

raw elements

 

i was human: 

i had to beg to descend

 

the salt, the bitter, the demanding, the preemptive

 

and like everyone, i took, i was taken

i dreamed

 

i was betrayed:

 

earth was given to me in a dream

in a dream i possessed it

summer night

by louise gluck from the seven ages

orderly, and out of long habit, my heart continues to beat.

i hear it, nights when i wake, over the mild sound of the air conditioner.

as i used to hear it over the beloved’s heart, or

variety of hearts, owing to there having been several.

and as it beats, it continues to drum up ridiculous emotion.

so many passionate letters never sent!

so many urgent journeys conceived of on summer nights,

surprise visits to men who were nearly complete strangers.

the tickets never bought, the letters never stamped.

and pride spared. and the life, in a sense, never completely lived.

and the art always in some danger of growing repetitious.

why not? why not? why should my poems not imitate my life?

whose lesson is not the apotheosis but the pattern, whose meaning

is not in the gesture but in the inertia, the reverie.

desire, loneliness, wind in the flowering almond --

surely these are the great, the inexhaustible subjects

to which my predecessors apprenticed themselves.

i hear them echo in my own heart, disguised as convention.

balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary,

imperial joy and sorrow of human existence,

the dreamed as well as the lived ---

what could be dearer than this, given the closeness of death?

aubade

by louise gluck from the seven ages

there was one summer

that returned many times over

there was one flower unfurling

taking many forms

crimson of the monarda, pale gold of the late roses

there was one love

there was one love, there were many nights

smell of the mock orange tree

corridors of jasmine and lilies

still the wind blew

there were many winters but i closed my eyes

the cold air white with dissolved wings

there was one garden when the snow melted

azure and white; i couldn’t tell

my solitude from love --

there was one love; he had many voices

there was one dawn; sometimes

we watched it together

i was here

i was here

there was one summer returning over and over

there was one dawn

i grew old watching

from a journal

by louise gluck from the seven ages

i had a lover once,

i had a lover twice,

easily three times i loved.

and in between

my heart reconstructed itself perfectly

like a worm.

and my dreams also reconstructed themselves.

after a time, i realized i was living

a completely idiotic life.

idiotic, wasted --

and sometime later, you and i

began to correspond, inventing

an entirely new form.

deep intimacy over great distance!

keats to fanny brawne, dante to beatrice --

one cannot invent

a new form in

an old character. the letters i sent remained

immaculately ironic, aloof

yet forthright. meanwhile, i was writing

different letters in my head,

some of which became poems.

so much genuine feeling!

so many fierce declarations

of passionate longing!

i loved once, i loved twice,

and suddenly

the form collapsed: i was

unable to sustain ignorance.

how sad to have lost you, to have lost

any chance of actually knowing you

or remembering you over time

as a real person, as someone i could have grown

deeply attached to, maybe

the brother i never had.

and how sad to think

of dying before finding out

anything. and to realize

how ignorant we all are most of the time,

seeing things

only from the one vantage, like a sniper.

and there were so many things

i never got to tell you about myself,

things which might have swayed you.

and the photo i never sent, taken

the night i looked almost splendid.

i wanted you to fall in love. but the arrow

kept hitting the mirror and coming back.

and the letters kept dividing themselves

with neither half totally true.

and sadly, you never figured out

any of this, though you always wrote back

so promptly, always the same elusive letter.

i loved once, i loved twice,

and even though in our case

things never got off the ground

it was a good thing to have tried.

and i still have the letters, of course.

sometimes i will take a few years’ worth

to reread in the garden,

with a glass of iced tea.

and i feel, sometimes, part of something

very great, wholly profound and sweeping.

i loved once, i loved twice,

easily three times i loved.

persephone the wanderer

by louise gluck from averno

In the first version, Persephone
is taken from her mother
and the goddess of the earth
punishes the earth—this is
consistent with what we known of human behavior,

that human beings take profound satisfaction
in doing harm, particularly
unconscious harm:

we may call this
negative creation.

Persephone’s initial
sojourn in hell continues to be
pawed over by scholars who dispute
the sensations of the virgin:

did she cooperate in her rape,
or was she drugged, violated against her will,
as happens so often now to modern girls.

As is well known, the return of the beloved
does not correct
the loss of the beloved: Persephone

returns home
stained with red juice like
a character in Hawthorne—

I am not certain I will
keep this word: is earth
”home” to Persephone? Is she at home, conceivable,
in the bed of the god? Is she
at home nowhere? Is she
a born wanderer, in other words
an existential
replica of her own mother, less
hamstrung by ideas of causality?

You are allowed to like
no one, you know. The characters
are not people.
They are aspects of a dilemma or conflict.

Three parts: just as the soul is divided,
ego, superego, id. Likewise

the three levels of the known world,
a kind of diagram that separates
heaven from earth from hell.

You must ask yourself:
where is it snowing?

White of forgetfulness,
of desecration—

It is snowing on earth; the cold wind says

Persephone is having sex in hell.
Unlike the rest of us, she doesn’t know
what winter is, only that
she is what causes it.

She is lying in the bed of Hades.
What is in her mind?
Is she afraid? Has something
blotted out the idea
of mind?

She does know the earth
is run by mothers, this much
is certain. She also knows
she is not what is called
a girl any longer. Regarding
incarceration, she believes

she has been a prisoner since she has been a daughter.

The terrible reunions in store for her
will take up the rest of her life.
When the passion for expiation
is chronic, fierce, you do not choose
the way you live. You do not live;
you are not allowed to die.

You drift between earth and death
which seem, finally,
strangely alike. Scholars tell us

that there is no point in knowing what you want
when the forces contending over you
could kill you.

White of forgetfulness,
white of safety—

They say
there is a rift in the human soul
which was not constructed to belong
entirely to life. Earth

Asks us to deny this rift, a threat
disguised as suggestion—
As we have seen
in the tale of Persephone
which should be read

As an argument between the mother and the lover—
the daughter is just meat.

When death confronts her, she has never seen
the meadow without the daisies.
Suddenly she is no longer
singing her maidenly songs.
about her mother’s
beauty and fecundity. Where
the rift is, the break is.

Song of the earth,
song of the mystic vision of eternal life—

My soul
shattered with the strain
of trying to belong to earth—

What will you do,
when it is your turn in the field with the god?

the traveler

by louise gluck from the seven ages

at the top of the tree was what i wanted.

fortunately i had read books:

i knew i was being tested.

i knew nothing would work --

not to climb that high, not to force

the fruit down. one of three results must follow:

the fruit isn’t what you imagined,

or it is but fails to satiate.

or it is damaged in falling

and as a shattered thing torments you forever.

but i refused to be

bested by fruit. i stood under the tree,

waiting for my mind to save me.

i stood, long after the fruit rotted.

and after many years, a traveler passed by me

where i stood, and greeted me warmly,

as one would greet a brother. and i asked why,

why was i so familiar to him,

having never seen him?

and he said,”because i am like you,

therefore i recognize you. i treated all experience

as a spiritual or intellectual trial

in which to exhibit or prove my superiority

to my predecessors. i chose

to live in hypothesis; longing sustained me.

in fact, what i needed most was longing, which you seem

to have achieved in stasis,

but which i have found in change, in departure.”

the sensual world

by louise gluck from the seven ages

i call to you across a monstrous river or chasm

to caution you, to prepare you.

earth will seduce you, slowly, imperceptibly,

subtly, not to say with connivance.

i was not prepared: i stood in my grandmother’s kitchen,

holding out my glass. stewed plums, stewed apricots --

the juice poured off into the glass of ice.

and the water added, patiently, in small increments,

the various cousins discriminating, tasting

with each addition --

aroma of summer fruit, intensity of concentration:

the colored liquid turning gradually lighter, more radiant,

more light passing through it.

delight, then solace. my grandmother waiting,

to see if more was wanted. solace, then deep immersion.

i loved nothing more: deep privacy of the sensual life,

the self disappearing into it or inseparable from it,

somehow suspended, floating, its needs

fully exposed, awakened, fully alive --

deep immersion, and with it

mysterious safety. far away, the fruit glowing in its glass bowls.

outside the kitchen, the sun setting.

i was not prepared: sunset, end of summer. demonstrations

of time as a continuum, as something coming to an end,

not a suspension; the senses wouldn’t protect me.

i caution you as i was never cautioned:

you will never let go, you will never be satiated.

you will be damaged and scarred, you will continue to hunger.

your body will age, you will continue to need.

you will want the earth, then more of the earth ---

sublime, indifferent, it is present, it will not respond.

it is encompassing, it will not minister.

meaning, it will feed you, it will ravish you,

it will not keep you alive.

quince tree

by louise gluck from the seven ages

we had, in the end, only the weather for a subject.

luckily, we lived in a world with seasons --

we felt, still, access to variety:

darkness, euphoria, various kinds of waiting.

i suppose, in the true sense, our exchanges

couldn’t be called conversation, being

dominated by accord, by repetition.

and yet it would be wrong to imagine

we had neither sense of one another nor

deep response to the world, as it would be wrong to believe

our lives were narrow, or empty.

we had great wealth.

we had, in fact, everything we could see

and while it is true we could see

neither great distance nor fine detail,

what we were able to discern we grasped

with a hunger the young can barely conceive,

as though all experience had been channeled into

these few perceptions.

channeled without memory.

because the past was lost to us as referent,

lost as image, as narrative. what had it contained?

was there love? had there been, once,

sustained labor? or fame, had there ever been

something like that?

in the end, we didn’t need to ask. because

we felt the past; it was, somehow,

in these things, the front lawn and back lawn,

suffusing them, giving the little quince tree

a weight and meaning almost beyond enduring.

utterly lost and yet strangely alive, the whole of our human existence ---

it would be wrong to think

because we never left the yard

that what we felt there was somehow shrunken or partial.

in its grandeur and splendor, the world

was finally present.

and it was always this we discussed or alluded to

when we were moved to speak.

the weather. the quince tree.

you, in your innocence, what do you know of this world?

departure

by louise gluck (from meadowlands)

the night isn’t dark; the world is dark.

stay with me a little longer.

your hands on the back of the chair--

that’s what i’ll remember.

before that, lightly stroking my shoulders.

like a man training himself to avoid the heart.

in the other room, the maid discreetly

putting out the light i read by.

that room with its chalk walls--

how will it look to you i wonder

once your exile begins? i think your eyes will seek out

its light as opposed to the moon.

apparently, after so many years, you need

distance to make plain its intensity.

your hands on the chair, stroking

my body and the wood in exactly the same way.

like a man who wants to feel longing again,

who prizes longing above all other emotions.

on the beach, voices of the greek farmers,

impatient for sunrise.

as though dawn will change them

from farmers into heroes.

and before that, you are holding me because you are going away--

these are statements you are making,

not questions needing answers.

how can i know you love me

unless i see you grieve over me?

matins

by louise gluck

i see it is with you as with the birches:
i am not to speak to you
in the personal way.  much
has passed between us.  or
was it always only
on the one side?  i am
at fault, at fault, i asked you
to be human - i am no needier
than other people.  but the absence
of all feeling, of the least
concern for me - i might as well go on
addressing the birches,
as in my former life: let them
bury me with the romantics,
their pointed yellow leaves
falling and covering me.

april

by louise gluck

no one's despair is like my despair -

you have no place in this garden
thinking such things, producing
the tiresome outward signs; the man
pointedly weeding an entire forest,
the womyn limping, refusing to change clothes
or wash her hair.

do you suppose i care
if you speak to one another?
but i mean you to know
i expected better of two creatures
who were given minds: if not
that you would actually care for each other
at least that you would understand
grief is distributed
between you, among all your kind, for me
to know you, as deep blue
marks the wild scilla, white
the wood violet.