Mitosis - Louise Gluck

No one actually remembers them
as not divided. Whoever says he does--
that person is lying.

No one remembers. And somehow
everyone knows:

they had to be, in the beginning, equally straightforward,
committed to a direct path.
In the end, only the body continued
implacably moving ahead, as it had to,
to stay alive.

But at some point the mind lingered.
It wanted more time by the sea, more time in the fields
gathering wildflowers. It wanted
more nights sleeping in its own bed; it wanted
its own nightlight, its favorite drink.
And more mornings--it wanted these
possibly most of all. More
of the first light, the penstemon blooming, the alchemilla
still covered with the evening jewels, the night rain
still clinging to it.

And then, more radically, it wanted to go back.
It wished simply to repeat the whole passage,
like the exultant conductor, who feels only that
the violin might have been a little softer, more plangent.

And through all this, the body
continues like the path of an arrow
as it has, to live.

And if that means to get to the end
(the mind buried like an arrowhead), what choice does it have,
what dream except the dream of the future?

Limitless world! The vistas clear, the clouds risen.
The water azure, the sea plants bending and sighing
among the coral reefs, the sullen mermaids
all suddenly angels, or like angels. And music
rising over the open sea--

Exactly like the dream of the mind.
The same sea, the same shimmering fields.
The plate of fruit, the identical
violin (in the past and the future) but
softer now, finally
sufficiently sad.

 

A Myth of Devotion, by Louise Glück

When Hades decided he loved this girl he built for her a duplicate of earth, everything the same, down to the meadow, but with a bed added. Everything the same, including sunlight, because it would be hard on a young girl to go so quickly from bright light to utter darkness Gradually, he thought, he'd introduce the night, first as the shadows of fluttering leaves. Then moon, then stars. Then no moon, no stars. Let Persephone get used to it slowly. In the end, he thought, she'd find it comforting. A replica of earth except there was love here. Doesn't everyone want love? He waited many years, building a world, watching Persephone in the meadow. Persephone, a smeller, a taster. If you have one appetite, he thought, you have them all. Doesn't everyone want to feel in the night the beloved body, compass, polestar, to hear the quiet breathing that says I am alive, that means also you are alive, because you hear me, you are here with me. And when one turns, the other turns— That's what he felt, the lord of darkness, looking at the world he had constructed for Persephone. It never crossed his mind that there'd be no more smelling here, certainly no more eating. Guilt? Terror? The fear of love? These things he couldn't imagine; no lover ever imagines them. He dreams, he wonders what to call this place. First he thinks: The New Hell. Then: The Garden. In the end, he decides to name it Persephone's Girlhood. A soft light rising above the level meadow, behind the bed. He takes her in his arms. He wants to say I love you, nothing can hurt you but he thinks this is a lie, so he says in the end you're dead, nothing can hurt you which seems to him a more promising beginning, more true.

Hurry Toward the Beginning, by Li-Young Lee

is it because the hour is late
the dove sounds new,

no longer asking
a path to its father's house,
no longer begging shoes of its mother?

or is it because i can't tell departure
from arrival, the host from the guest,

the one who waits expectant at the window
from the one who, even now, tramples the dew?

i can't tell what my father said about the sea
we crossed together
from the sea itself,

or the rose's noon from my mother
crying on the stairs, lost
between a country and a country.

everywhere is home to the rain.
the hours themselves, where do they hide?
the fruit of listening, what's that?

are the days the offspring of distracted hands?
does waiting that grows out of waiting
grow lighter? what does my death weigh?
what's earlier, thirst or shade?
is all light late, the echo to some prior bell?

is it because i'm tired that i don't know?
or is it because i'm dying?
when will i be born? am i the flower,
wide awake inside the falling fruit?
or a man waiting for a woman
asleep behind a door?
what if a word unlocks
room after room the days
wait inside? still,

night amasses a foreground
current to my window.
listen. whose footsteps are those
hurrying toward beginning?

Ivy, Late Sun, With Fettucine, by David Citino

There is art on these walls, as if
windows could be improved on—
Dufy's riotous, variegated fields,
flashes of dancers by Degas,
posters bruiting shows of shows.

Yet as we wait for water to boil
for pasta, as chicken simmers
in Pinot grigio, lemon, basil,
I want the tongue of summer sun
on green afternoon leaves.

Now I know what ivy has tried
all my life to mean, and gold.
What, on a day so pure, can compete
with green? Yet we insist on not
leaving well enough alone. Years

I've stained the brightness of paper
with dark words, when I have
love, ivy's newest hues,
rooms and rooms of nothing but
everything there is, light, true light.

The Confession of An Apricot by Carl Adamshick

I love incorrectly.


There is a solemnity in hands,
the way a palm will curve
in accordance with a contour of skin,
the way it will release a story.

This should be a pilgrimage.
The touching of a source.
This is what sanctifies.

This pleading. This mercy.
I want to be a pilgrim to everyone,
close to the inaccuracies, the astringent
dislikes, the wayward peace, the private
words. I want to be close to the telling.
I want to feel everyone whisper.

After the blossoming I hang.
The encyclical that has come
through the branches
instructs us to root, to become
the design encapsulated within.

Flesh helping stone turn tree.

I do not want to hold life
at my extremities, see it prepare
itself for my own perpetuation.
I want to touch and be touched
by things similar in the world.

I want to know a few secular days
of perfection. Late in this one great season
the diffused morning light
hides the horizon of sea. Everything
the color of slate, a soft tablet
to press a philosophy to.

On Death, Without Exaggeration

  

It can't take a joke,
find a star, make a bridge.
It knows nothing about weaving, mining, farming,
building ships, or baking cakes.

In our planning for tomorrow,
it has the final word,
which is always beside the point.

It can't even get the things done
that are part of its trade:
dig a grave,
make a coffin,
clean up after itself.

Preoccupied with killing,
it does the job awkwardly,
without system or skill.
As though each of us were its first kill.

Oh, it has its triumphs,
but look at its countless defeats,
missed blows,
and repeat attempts!

Sometimes it isn't strong enough
to swat a fly from the air.
Many are the caterpillars
that have outcrawled it.

All those bulbs, pods,
tentacles, fins, tracheae,
nuptial plumage, and winter fur
show that it has fallen behind
with its halfhearted work.

Ill will won't help
and even our lending a hand with wars and coups d'etat
is so far not enough.

Hearts beat inside eggs.
Babies' skeletons grow.
Seeds, hard at work, sprout their first tiny pair of leaves
and sometimes even tall trees fall away.

Whoever claims that it's omnipotent
is himself living proof
that it's not.

There's no life
that couldn't be immortal
if only for a moment.

Death
always arrives by that very moment too late.

In vain it tugs at the knob
of the invisible door.
As far as you've come
can't be undone.

The Madness of King George

It was time for me to go. I drank
a beer and a whiskey and should have been sipping
Italian sodas, should have been home
watching an old movie
or reading Twain but I decided to feed my limitations
instead. Get a little drunk. Get a little sad.
The woman sitting next to me calls herself Summer
and keeps touching her lips
and scratching her thigh
and ordering a martini
and talking about history. George Washington
and the madness of King George. “He would walk around
the palace garden wearing nothing
but his crown, crying, holding his gaudy scepter in his hands
like an infant.” I am like him, I thought,
and ask for my bill
while this other person, this other
life puts her hand on my knee. “Do you ever think
about what would have happened if Germany won the war?”
she says. Street signs in two languages.
The Jews really gone. And the Mormons too. Oktoberfest
everywhere. I can see the line
her underwear is making beneath the gray silk. I can see
the wash of freckles on her shoulders.
This is what loneliness is all about. A table
full of bread and wine and you starving but unable to eat or drink,
just staring at it like you were staring
at a television set. “I think Amelia Earhart is alive and living
in Florida… there are pictures of her
walking on the beach.” Her and Elvis and the Kennedy Brothers.
History getting undead
and moving to warmer climates. I am peering out
from my own grave,
I think, and pay my tab. I put my coat on
and Summer is sliding her long index finger around the rim
of her glass and then licking it. “This economy,”
she says,“the price of gas!… It’s almost like we’re living
in wartime” I am closing my wallet.
I am stepping away from the bar,
looking at her, stranger now than when we met an hour ago,
when I first noticed her neck, her breasts. “But we are,” I say,
“We are living in wartime”
And then her finger stops and she looks up at me and says “Oh, I know,
but I mean really, really at war, you know like here, where you and I are.