The Disquieting Muses
Mother, mother, what illbred aunt
Or what disfigured and unsightly
Cousin did you so unwisely keep
Unasked to my christening, that she
Sent these ladies in her stead
With heads like darning-eggs to nod
And nod and nod at foot and head
And at the left side of my crib?
Mother, who made to order stories
Of Mixie Blackshort the heroic bear,
Mother, whose witches always, always
Got baked into gingerbread, I wonder
Whether you saw them, whether you said
Words to rid me of those three ladies
Nodding by night around my bed,
Mouthless, eyeless, with stitched bald head.
In the hurricane, when father’s twelve
Study windows bellied in
Like bubbles about to break, you fed
My brother and me cookies and Ovaltine
And helped the two of us to choir:
“Thor is angry: boom boom boom!
Thor is angry: we don’t care!”
But those ladies broke the panes.
When on tiptoe the schoolgirls danced,
Blinking flashlights like fireflies
And singing the glowworm song, I could
Not lift a foot in the twinkle-dress
But, heavy-footed, stood aside
In the shadow cast by my dismal-headed
Godmothers, and you cried and cried:
And the shadow stretched, the lights went out.
Mother, you sent me to piano lessons
And praised my arabesques and trills
Although each teacher found my touch
Oddly wooden in spite of scales
And the hours of practicing, my ear
Tone-deaf and yes, unteachable.
I learned, I learned, I learned elsewhere,
From muses unhired by you, dear mother,
I woke one day to see you, mother,
Floating above me in bluest air
On a green balloon bright with a million
Flowers and bluebirds that never were
Never, never, found anywhere.
But the little planet bobbed away
Like a soap-bubble as you called: Come here!
And I faced my traveling companions.
Day now, night now, at head, side, feet,
They stand their vigil in gowns of stone,
Faces blank as the day I was born,
Their shadows long in the setting sun
That never brightens or goes down.
And this is the kingdom you bore me to,
Mother, mother. But no frown of mine
Will betray the company I keep.
Medallion
By the gate with star and moon
Worked into the peeled orange wood
The bronze snake lay in the sun
Inert as a shoelace; dead
But pliable still, his jaw
Unhinged and his grin crooked,
Tongue a rose-colored arrow.
Over my hand I hung him.
His little vermilion eye
Ignited with a glassed flame
As I turned him in the light;
When I split a rock one time
The garnet bits burned like that.
Dust dulled his back to ocher
The way sun ruins a trout.
Yet his belly kept its fire
Going under the chainmail,
The old jewels smoldering there
In each opaque belly-scale:
Sunset looked at through milk glass.
And I saw white maggots coil
Thin as pins in the dark bruise
Where his innards bulged as if
He were digesting a mouse.
Knifelike, he was chaste enough,
Pure death’s-metal. The yardman’s
Flung brick perfected his laugh.
The Companionable Ills
The nose-end that twitches, the old imperfections—
Tolerable now as moles on the face
Put up with until chagrin gives place
To a wry complaisance—
Dug in first as God’s spurs
To start the spirit out of the mud
It stabled in; long-used, became well-loved
Bedfellows of the spirit’s debauch, fond masters.
Moonrise
Grub-white mulberries redden among leaves.
I’ll go out and sit in white like they do,
Doing nothing. July’s juice rounds their nubs.
This park is fleshed with idiot petals.
White catalpa flowers tower, topple,
Cast a round white shadow in their dying.
A pigeon rudders down. Its fantail’s white.
Vocation enough: opening, shutting
White petals, white fantails, ten white fingers.
Enough for fingernails to make half-moons
Redden in white palms no labor reddens.
White bruises toward color, else collapses.
Berries redden. A body of whiteness
Rots, and smells of rot under its headstone
Though the body walk out in clean linen.
I smell that whiteness here,
Mother, mother, what illbred aunt
Or what disfigured and unsightly
Cousin did you so unwisely keep
Unasked to my christening, that she
Sent these ladies in her stead
With heads like darning-eggs to nod
And nod and nod at foot and head
And at the left side of my crib?
Mother, who made to order stories
Of Mixie Blackshort the heroic bear,
Mother, whose witches always, always
Got baked into gingerbread, I wonder
Whether you saw them, whether you said
Words to rid me of those three ladies
Nodding by night around my bed,
Mouthless, eyeless, with stitched bald head.
In the hurricane, when father’s twelve
Study windows bellied in
Like bubbles about to break, you fed
My brother and me cookies and Ovaltine
And helped the two of us to choir:
“Thor is angry: boom boom boom!
Thor is angry: we don’t care!”
But those ladies broke the panes.
When on tiptoe the schoolgirls danced,
Blinking flashlights like fireflies
And singing the glowworm song, I could
Not lift a foot in the twinkle-dress
But, heavy-footed, stood aside
In the shadow cast by my dismal-headed
Godmothers, and you cried and cried:
And the shadow stretched, the lights went out.
Mother, you sent me to piano lessons
And praised my arabesques and trills
Although each teacher found my touch
Oddly wooden in spite of scales
And the hours of practicing, my ear
Tone-deaf and yes, unteachable.
I learned, I learned, I learned elsewhere,
From muses unhired by you, dear mother,
I woke one day to see you, mother,
Floating above me in bluest air
On a green balloon bright with a million
Flowers and bluebirds that never were
Never, never, found anywhere.
But the little planet bobbed away
Like a soap-bubble as you called: Come here!
And I faced my traveling companions.
Day now, night now, at head, side, feet,
They stand their vigil in gowns of stone,
Faces blank as the day I was born,
Their shadows long in the setting sun
That never brightens or goes down.
And this is the kingdom you bore me to,
Mother, mother. But no frown of mine
Will betray the company I keep.
Medallion
By the gate with star and moon
Worked into the peeled orange wood
The bronze snake lay in the sun
Inert as a shoelace; dead
But pliable still, his jaw
Unhinged and his grin crooked,
Tongue a rose-colored arrow.
Over my hand I hung him.
His little vermilion eye
Ignited with a glassed flame
As I turned him in the light;
When I split a rock one time
The garnet bits burned like that.
Dust dulled his back to ocher
The way sun ruins a trout.
Yet his belly kept its fire
Going under the chainmail,
The old jewels smoldering there
In each opaque belly-scale:
Sunset looked at through milk glass.
And I saw white maggots coil
Thin as pins in the dark bruise
Where his innards bulged as if
He were digesting a mouse.
Knifelike, he was chaste enough,
Pure death’s-metal. The yardman’s
Flung brick perfected his laugh.
The Companionable Ills
The nose-end that twitches, the old imperfections—
Tolerable now as moles on the face
Put up with until chagrin gives place
To a wry complaisance—
Dug in first as God’s spurs
To start the spirit out of the mud
It stabled in; long-used, became well-loved
Bedfellows of the spirit’s debauch, fond masters.
Moonrise
Grub-white mulberries redden among leaves.
I’ll go out and sit in white like they do,
Doing nothing. July’s juice rounds their nubs.
This park is fleshed with idiot petals.
White catalpa flowers tower, topple,
Cast a round white shadow in their dying.
A pigeon rudders down. Its fantail’s white.
Vocation enough: opening, shutting
White petals, white fantails, ten white fingers.
Enough for fingernails to make half-moons
Redden in white palms no labor reddens.
White bruises toward color, else collapses.
Berries redden. A body of whiteness
Rots, and smells of rot under its headstone
Though the body walk out in clean linen.
I smell that whiteness here,
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