Poems 1962-2012
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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.