Poems 1962-2012 Read online

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  FIRSTBORN (1968)

  I. THE EGG

  The Chicago Train

  The Egg

  Thanksgiving

  Hesitate to Call

  My Cousin in April

  Returning a Lost Child

  Labor Day

  The Wound

  Silverpoint

  Early December in Croton-on-Hudson

  II. THE EDGE

  The Edge

  Grandmother in the Garden

  Pictures of the People in the War

  The Racer’s Widow

  Portrait of the Queen in Tears

  Bridal Piece

  My Neighbor in the Mirror

  My Life Before Dawn

  The Lady in the Single

  The Cripple in the Subway

  Nurse’s Song

  Seconds

  Letter from Our Man in Blossomtime

  The Cell

  The Islander

  Letter from Provence

  Memo from the Cave

  Firstborn

  La Force

  The Game

  III. COTTONMOUTH COUNTRY

  Cottonmouth Country

  Phenomenal Survivals of Death in Nantucket

  Easter Season

  Scraps

  The Tree House

  Meridian

  Late Snow

  To Florida

  The Slave Ship

  Solstice

  The Inlet

  Saturnalia

  THE HOUSE ON MARSHLAND (1975)

  I. ALL HALLOWS

  All Hallows

  The Pond

  Gretel in Darkness

  For My Mother

  Archipelago

  The Magi

  The Shad-blow Tree

  Messengers

  The Murderess

  Flowering Plum

  Nativity Poem

  To Autumn

  Still Life

  For Jane Myers

  Gratitude

  Poem

  The School Children

  Jeanne d’Arc

  Departure

  Gemini

  II. THE APPLE TREES

  The Undertaking

  Pomegranate

  Brennende Liebe

  Abishag

  12. 6. 71

  Love Poem

  Northwood Path

  The Fire

  The Fortress

  Here Are My Black Clothes

  Under Taurus

  The Swimmer

  The Letters

  Japonica

  The Apple Trees

  DESCENDING FIGURE (1980)

  I. THE GARDEN

  The Drowned Children

  The Garden

  Palais des Arts

  Pietà

  Descending Figure

  Thanksgiving

  II. THE MIRROR

  Epithalamium

  Illuminations

  The Mirror

  Portrait

  Tango

  Swans

  Night Piece

  Portland, 1968

  Porcelain Bowl

  Dedication to Hunger

  Happiness

  III. LAMENTATIONS

  Autumnal

  Aubade

  Aphrodite

  Rosy

  The Dream of Mourning

  The Gift

  World Breaking Apart

  The Return

  Lamentations

  THE TRIUMPH OF ACHILLES (1985)

  I

  Mock Orange

  Metamorphosis

  Brooding Likeness

  Exile

  Winter Morning

  Seated Figure

  Mythic Fragment

  Hyacinth

  The Triumph of Achilles

  Baskets

  Liberation

  II

  The Embrace

  Marathon

  Summer

  III

  The Reproach

  The End of the World

  The Mountain

  A Parable

  Day Without Night

  Elms

  Adult Grief

  Hawk’s Shadow

  From the Japanese

  Legend

  Morning

  Horse

  ARARAT (1990)

  Parodos

  A Fantasy

  A Novel

  Labor Day

  Lover of Flowers

  Widows

  Confession

  A Precedent

  Lost Love

  Lullaby

  Mount Ararat

  Appearances

  The Untrustworthy Speaker

  A Fable

  New World

  Birthday

  Brown Circle

  Children Coming Home from School

  Animals

  Saints

  Yellow Dahlia

  Cousins

  Paradise

  Child Crying Out

  Snow

  Terminal Resemblance

  Lament

  Mirror Image

  Children Coming Home from School

  Amazons

  Celestial Music

  First Memory

  THE WILD IRIS (1992)

  The Wild Iris

  Matins

  Matins

  Trillium

  Lamium

  Snowdrops

  Clear Morning

  Spring Snow

  End of Winter

  Matins

  Matins

  Scilla

  Retreating Wind

  The Garden

  The Hawthorn Tree

  Love in Moonlight

  April

  Violets

  Witchgrass

  The Jacob’s Ladder

  Matins

  Matins

  Song

  Field Flowers

  The Red Poppy

  Clover

  Matins

  Heaven and Earth

  The Doorway

  Midsummer

  Vespers

  Vespers

  Vespers

  Daisies

  End of Summer

  Vespers

  Vespers

  Vespers

  Early Darkness

  Harvest

  The White Rose

  Ipomoea

  Presque Isle

  Retreating Light

  Vespers

  Vespers: Parousia

  Vespers

  Vespers

  Sunset

  Lullaby

  The Silver Lily

  September Twilight

  The Gold Lily

  The White Lilies

  MEADOWLANDS (1996)

  Penelope’s Song

  Cana

  Quiet Evening

  Ceremony

  Parable of the King

  Moonless Night

  Departure

  Ithaca

  Telemachus’ Detachment

  Parable of the Hostages

  Rainy Morning

  Parable of the Trellis

  Telemachus’ Guilt

  Anniversary

  Meadowlands 1

  Telemachus’ Kindness

  Parable of the Beast

  Midnight

  Siren

  Meadowlands 2

  Marina

  Parable of the Dove

  Telemachus’ Dilemma

  Meadowlands 3

  The Rock

  Circe’s Power

  Telemachus’ Fantasy

  Parable of Flight

  Odysseus’ Decision

  Nostos

  The Butterfly

  Circe’s Torment

  Circe’s Grief

  Penelope’s Stubbornness

  Telemachus’ Confession

  Void

  Telemachus’ Burden

  Parable of the Swans

  Purple Bathing Suit

  Parable of Faith

  Reunion

  The Dream

  Otis

  The Wish

  Parable of the Gift

  Heart’s Desire

  VITA NOVA (1999)

  Vita Nova

  Aubade

  The Queen of Carthage

  The Open Grave

  Unwritten Law

  The Burning Heart

  Roman Study

  The New Life

  Formaggio

  Timor Mortis

  Lute Song

  Orfeo

  Descent to the Valley

  The Garment

  Condo

  Immortal Love

  Earthly Love

  Eurydice

  Castile

  Mutable Earth

  The Winged Horse

  Earthly Terror

  The Golden Bough

  Evening Prayers

  Relic

  Nest

  Ellsworth Avenue

  Inferno

  Seizure

  The Mystery

  Lament

  Vita Nova

  THE SEVEN AGES (2001)

  The Seven Ages

  Moonbeam

  The Sensual W
orld

  Mother and Child

  Fable

  Solstice

  Stars

  Youth

  Exalted Image

  Reunion

  Radium

  Birthday

  Ancient Text

  From a Journal

  Island

  The Destination

  The Balcony

  Copper Beech

  Study of My Sister

  August

  Summer at the Beach

  Rain in Summer

  Civilization

  Decade

  The Empty Glass

  Quince Tree

  The Traveler

  Arboretum

  Dream of Lust

  Grace

  Fable

  The Muse of Happiness

  Ripe Peach

  Unpainted Door

  Mitosis

  Eros

  The Ruse

  Time

  Memoir

  Saint Joan

  Aubade

  Screened Porch

  Summer Night

  Fable

  AVERNO (2006)

  The Night Migrations

  I

  October

  Persephone the Wanderer

  Prism

  Crater Lake

  Echoes

  Fugue

  II

  The Evening Star

  Landscape

  A Myth of Innocence

  Archaic Fragment

  Blue Rotunda

  A Myth of Devotion

  Averno

  Omens

  Telescope

  Thrush

  Persephone the Wanderer

  A VILLAGE LIFE (2009)

  Twilight

  Pastoral

  Tributaries

  Noon

  Before the Storm

  Sunset

  In the Café

  In the Plaza

  Dawn

  First Snow

  Earthworm

  At the River

  A Corridor

  Fatigue

  Burning Leaves

  Walking at Night

  Via delle Ombre

  Hunters

  A Slip of Paper

  Bats

  Burning Leaves

  March

  A Night in Spring

  Harvest

  Confession

  Marriage

  Primavera

  Figs

  At the Dance

  Solitude

  Earthworm

  Olive Trees

  Sunrise

  A Warm Day

  Burning Leaves

  Crossroads

  Bats

  Abundance

  Midsummer

  Threshing

  A Village Life

  Index of Titles

  Also by Louise Glück

  Copyright

  FIRSTBORN (1968)

  TO MY TEACHER

  I THE EGG

  THE CHICAGO TRAIN

  Across from me the whole ride

  Hardly stirred: just Mister with his barren

  Skull across the arm-rest while the kid

  Got his head between his mama’s legs and slept. The poison

  That replaces air took over.

  And they sat—as though paralysis preceding death

  Had nailed them there. The track bent south.

  I saw her pulsing crotch … the lice rooted in that baby’s hair.

  THE EGG

  I

  Everything went in the car.

  Slept in the car, slept

  Like angels in the duned graveyards,

  Being gone. A week’s meat

  Spoiled, peas

  Giggled in their pods: we

  Stole. And then in Edgartown

  I heard my insides

  Roll into a crib …

  Washing underwear in the Atlantic

  Touched the sun’s sea

  As light welled

  That could devour water.

  After Edgartown

  We went the other way.

  II

  Until aloft beyond

  The sterilizer his enormous hands

  Swarmed, carnivorous,

  For prey. Beneath which,

  Dripping white, stripped

  Open to the wand,

  I saw the lamps

  Converging in his glasses.

  Dramamine. You let him

  Rob me. But

  How long? how long?

  Past cutlery I saw

  My body stretching like a tear

  Along the paper.

  III

  Always nights I feel the ocean

  Biting at my life. By

  Inlet, in this net

  Of bays, and on. Unsafe.

  And on, numb

  In the bourbon ripples

  Of your breath

  I knot …

  Across the beach the fish

  Are coming in. Without skins,

  Without fins, the bare

  Households of their skulls

  Still fixed, piling

  With the other waste.

  Husks, husks. Moons

  Whistle in their mouths,

  Through gasping mussels.

  Pried flesh. And flies

  Like planets, clamped shells

  Clink blindly through

  Veronicas of waves …

  The thing

  Is hatching. Look. The bones

  Are bending to give way.

  It’s dark. It’s dark.

  He’s brought a bowl to catch

  The pieces of the baby.

  THANKSGIVING

  In every room, encircled by a name—

  less Southern boy from Yale,

  There was my younger sister singing a Fellini theme

  And making phone calls

  While the rest of us kept moving her discarded boots

  Or sat and drank. Outside, in twenty—

  nine degrees, a stray cat

  Grazed in our driveway,

  Seeking waste. It scratched the pail.

  There were no other sounds.

  Yet on and on the preparation of that vast consoling meal

  Edged toward the stove. My mother

  Had the skewers in her hands.

  I watched her tucking skin

  As though she missed her young, while bits of onion

  Misted snow over the pronged death.

  HESITATE TO CALL

  Lived to see you throwing

  Me aside. That fought

  Like netted fish inside me. Saw you throbbing

  In my syrups. Saw you sleep. And lived to see

  That all that all flushed down

  The refuse. Done?

  It lives in me.

  You live in me. Malignant.

  Love, you ever want me, don’t.

  MY COUSIN IN APRIL

  Under cerulean, amid her backyard’s knobby rhubarb squats

  My cousin to giggle with her baby, pat

  His bald top. From a window I can catch them mull basil,

  Glinty silica, sienna through the ground’s brocade

  Of tarragon or pause under the oblong shade

  Of the garage. The nervous, emerald

  Fanning of some rhizome skims my cousin’s knee

  As up and down she bends to the baby.

  I’m knitting sweaters for her second child.

  As though, down miles of dinners, had not heard her rock her bed

  In rage and thought it years she lay, locked in that tantrum …

  Oh but such stir as in her body had to come round. Amid violet,

  Azalea, round around the whole arriving garden

  Now with her son she passes what I paused

  To catch, the early bud phases, on the springing grass.

  RETURNING A LOST CHILD

  Nothing moves. In its cage, the broken

  Blossom of a fan sways

  Limply, trickling its wire, as her thin

  Arms, hung like flypaper, twist about the boy …

  Later, blocking the doorway, tongue

  Pinned to the fat wedge of his pop, he watches

  As I find the other room, the father strung

  On crutches, waiting to be roused …

  Now squeezed from thanks the woman’s lemonade lies

  In my cup. As endlessly she picks

  Her spent kleenex into dust, always

  Staring at that man, hearing the click,

  Click of his brain’s whirling empty spindle …

  LABOR DAY

  Requiring something lovely on his arm

  Took me to Stamford, Connecticut, a quasi-farm,

  His family’s; later picking up the mammoth

  Girlfriend of Charlie, meanwhile trying to pawn me off

  On some third guy also up for the weekend.

  But Saturday we still were paired; spent

  It sprawled across that sprawling acreage

  Until the grass grew limp

  With damp. Like me. Johnston-baby, I can still see

  The pelted clover, burrs’ prickle fur and gorged

  Pastures spewing infinite tiny bells. You pimp.

  THE WOUND

  The air stiffens to a crust.

  From bed I watch

  Clots of flies, crickets

  Frisk and titter. Now

  The weather is such grease.

  All day I smell the roasts

  Like presences. You

  Root into your books.

  You do your stuff.

  In here my bedroom walls

  Are paisley, like a plot

  Of embryos. I lie here,

  Waiting for its kick.

  My love. My tenant. br />
  As the shrubs grow

  Downy, bloom and seed.

  The hedges grow downy

  And seed and moonlight

  Burbles through the gauze.

  Sticky curtains. Faking scrabble

  With the pair next door

  I watched you clutch your blank.