Elegy: Muriel Rukeyeser

As I went down to Rotten Lake I remembered
the wrecked season, haunted by plans of salvage,
snow, the closed door, footsteps and resurrections,
machinery of sorrow.

The warm grass gave to the feet and the stilltide water
was floor of evening and magnetic light and
reflection of wish, the black-haired beast with my eyes
walking beside me.

The green and yellow lights, the street of water standing
point to the image of that house whose destruction
I weep when I weep you. My door (no), poems, rest,
(don’t say it! ) untamable need.

*

When you have left the river you are a little way
nearer the lake; but I leave many times.
Parents parried my past; the present was poverty,
the future depended on my unfinished spirit.
There were no misgivings because there was no choice,
only regret for waste, and the wild knowledge:
growth and sorrow and discovery.

Charlie Howard’s Descent: Mark Doty

Between the bridge and the river
he falls through
a huge portion of night;
it is not as if falling
is something new. Over and over
he slipped into the gulf
between what he knew and how
he was known. What others wanted
opened like an abyss: the laughing
stock-clerks at the grocery, women
at the luncheonette amused by his gestures.
What could he do, live
with one hand tied
behind his back? So he began to fall
into the star-faced section
of night between the trestle
and the water because he could not meet
a little town’s demands,
and his earrings shone and his wrists
were as limp as they were.
I imagine he took the insults in
and made of them a place to live;
we learn to use the names
because they are there,
familiar furniture: faggot
was the bed he slept in, hard
and white, but simple somehow,
queer something sharp
but finally useful, a tool,
all the jokes a chair,
stiff-backed to keep the spine straight,
a table, a lamp. And because
he’s fallen for twenty-three years,
despite whatever awkwardness
his flailing arms and legs assume
he is beautiful
and like any good diver
has only an edge of fear
he transforms into grace.
Or else he is not afraid,
and in this way climbs back
up the ladder of his fall,
out of the river into the arms
of the three teenage boys
who hurled him from the edge—
really boys now, afraid,
their fathers’ cars shivering behind them,
headlights on—and tells them
it’s all right, that he knows
they didn’t believe him
when he said he couldn’t swim,
and blesses his killers
in the way that only the dead
can afford to forgive.

Elegy for Earth: Frank Bidart

Because earth’s inmates travel in flesh

and hide from flesh

and adore flesh

you hunger for flesh that does not die

But hunger for the absolute
breeds hatred of the absolute

Those who are the vessels of revelation

or who think that they are

ravage

us with the promise of rescue

•

My mother outside in the air
waving, shriveled, as if she knew

this is the last time—

watching as I climbed the stairs
and the plane swallowed me. She and I

could no more change what we hurtled toward

than we could change the weather. Finding my
seat, unseen I stared back as she receded.

•

They drop into holes in the earth, everything

you loved, loved and
hated, as you will drop—

and the moment when all was possible

gone. You are still
above earth, the moment when all

and nothing is possible

long gone. Terrified of the sea, we

cling to the hull.

•

In adolescence, you thought your work
ancient work: to decipher at last

human beings’ relation to God. Decipher

love. To make what was once whole
whole again: or to see

why it never should have been thought whole.

•

Earth was a tiny labyrinthine ball orbiting

another bigger ball
so bright

you can go blind staring at it

when the source of warmth and light
withdraws

then terrible winter

when burning and relentless
it draws too close

the narcotically gorgeous

fecund earth
withers

as if the sun

as if the sun
taught us

what we will ever know of the source

now too
far

then too close

•

Blood

island
where you for a time lived

 

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Reading Voice: an Introduction to Lyric Poetry Copyright © by Emily Barth is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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