women

when I look back now

at the abuse I took from

her

I feel shame that I was so

innocent,

but I must say

she did match me drink for

drink,

and I realized that her life

her feelings for things

had been ruined

along the way

and that I was no mare than a

temporary

companion;

she was ten years older

and mortally hurt by the past

and the present;

she treated me badly:

Along the strand stones,
busted shells, wood scraps,
bottle tops, dimpled
and stainless beer cans.
Something began here
a century ago,
a nameless disaster,
perhaps a voyage
to the lost continent
where I was born.
Now the cold winds
of March dimple
the gray, incoming
waves. I kneel
on the wet earth
looking for a sign,
maybe an old coin,
an amulet
against storms,
and find my face
blackened in a pool
of oil and water.

[They picked him up in the grass where he had lain two
days in the rain with a piece of shrapnel in his lungs.]

Come to me only with playthings now. . .
A picture of a singing woman with blue eyes
Standing at a fence of hollyhocks, poppies and sunflowers. . .
Or an old man I remember sitting with children telling stories
Of days that never happened anywhere in the world. . .

No more iron cold and real to handle,
Shaped for a drive straight ahead.
Bring me only beautiful useless things.

My Boss keeps sporty girls, they say;
His belly's big with cheer.
He squanders in a single day
What I make in a year.
For I must toil with bloody sweat,
And body bent and scarred,
While my whole life-gain he could bet
Upon a single card.

By Boss is big and I am small;
I slave to keep him rich.
He'd look at me like scum and call
Me something of a bitch . . .
Ah no! he wouldn't use that phrase
To designate my mother:
Despite his high and mighty ways,
My Boss is my twin-brother.

He was my best and oldest friend.
I'd known him all my life.
And yet I'm sure towards the end
He knew I loved his wife,
And wonder, wonder if it's why
He came so dreadfully to die.

He drove his car at racing speed
And crashed into a tree.
How could he have so little heed?
A skillful driver he.
I think he must have found that day
Some love-letters that went astray.

I looked into the woman's eyes
And there I saw she knew.
There was no shadow of surmise, -
For her himself he slew:

When Tom and I were married, we took a little flat;
I had a taste for singing and playing and all that.
And Tom, who loved to hear me, said he hoped
I would not stop
All practice, like so many wives who let their
music drop.
So I resolved to set apart an hour or two each day
To keeping vocal chords and hands in trim to sing and play.

The second morning I had been for half and hour or more
At work on Haydn’s masses, when a tap came at my door.
A nurse, who wore a dainty cap and apron, and a smile,

Espanol:


Divina Lysi mía:
perdona si me atrevo
a llamarte así, cuando
aun de ser tuya el nombre no merezco.

A esto, no osadía
es llamarte así, puesto
que a ti te sobran rayos,
si en mí pudiera haber atrevimientos.

Error es de la lengua,
que lo que dice imperio
del dueño, en el dominio,
parezcan posesiones en el siervo.

Mi rey, dice el vasallo;
mi cárcel, dice el preso;
y el más humilde esclavo,
sin agraviarlo, llama suyo al dueño.

My black pearl…
My black diamond
My gold,

Which gives a black brightness…

It was you who taught me how to be love again
It was you who taught me how to be happy again
It was you who gave me the willingness to live again

But…

Why have you let me float in space
Without you as my parachute?

Why have you choose
To make me a wicked man?

Why have made me a man
Hate his kind of women?

Yes…

Now I give you the permission

I.

Dead ! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Dead ! both my boys ! When you sit at the feast
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
Let none look at me !

II.
Yet I was a poetess only last year,
And good at my art, for a woman, men said ;
But this woman, this, who is agonized here,
-- The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head
For ever instead.

III.
What art can a woman be good at ? Oh, vain !

The secret of the stars, -- gravitation.
The secret of the earth, -- layers of rock.
The secret of the soil, -- to receive seed.
The secret of the seed, -- the germ.
The secret of man, -- the sower.
The secret of woman, -- the soil.
My secret: Under a mound that you shall never find.