Nightfall
Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds
. . . and bring in cloudy night immediately.
(romeo and juliet)
i.
" . . . and sex and death," the teacher said,
trying to teach us to make connections.
Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds.
That was the murmur brimming in our heads --
our knees -- our nervous fingers as we typed,
or drummed them on the desktops -
in our jaws, as we chewed pencils into pulp.
"and sex and death," she said -
I didn't understand. My teeth
went through my thirteenth pencil
and I didn't understand. Gallop apace -
we hammered it into the pavement,
walking to school in our heels. I worried
my lower lip to shreds, and spent
day after day watching, and thought
that I knew nothing about waiting.
ii.
Alone at last, my love: the ingenue
sighs, sinking deep into the scented dark.
I have shut the light off, and my room
makes its pale blue square around me,
pure as a little bird's egg. It is comfortable to think of him,
as I think of him, under the clean white quilt,
and the air smells conveniently of flowers.
None of the trees have blossomed yet, with their maddening odors.
The light that buttered me is gone. The door's white as the windowsill -
I can rely on it.
We are alone at last, my precious. Our dreams -
giddy, drowsed, half-waking - are inviolable.
iii.
The jingling and jangling of car-keys,
the stars in the mirror, the eloquent greases.
Spices and electricity: the pungent heat,
sliding over the length of our backs,
and the bones curve, as savage as weaponry.
Whetted against the scarlet-
painted lip, the toothy mouth
seethes, ravenous for light and speed.
The city throbs under its coat of glitter.
Tap tap tap the clangor of sharp heels:
we well-thorned women in our silent box,
rattling against its walls with our bright, lacquered limbs.
The fevered voices fuse. The shrill columns of smoke
rise from our fingers, mingle in the thick, charged air.
iv.
It is the place where you expect the fairy-dances,
their rings of intoxicant mushrooms -
deep woods, or the foaming stars
coming over the rim of it, once and again.
The long shiver under it . The wind's furtive tongue.
Circled in candles, I spangled it:
stung it all over with the flickering pins
of our civilization. Naked, I married it:
breathless and damp-haired in the clasp of its dark,
its ice-country colors.
The tucks in my wedding gown: the invisible featherings,
closer, and flapping away, incomparable.
v.
It has been dark and strange and brutal:
cars rattling in a symphony of junk, the rusted sky
over the asphalt, the sour eyes
of tobacco-crusted lamps, dirty grommets
which, slit by slit, unsheathe
their knifelengths, sulfur-yellow, all the way
until the earth curves. Twisted, steaming,
the murderous metal, one light gone, one hard
and mercilessly white, and all around
this silence as stubborn as the pavement
under its lurid wash.
vi.
And when you told me, it was morning.
There were the obligatory birdsongs
and in my heart, which was a child's heart,
I ached for them, as I ache for sugared eggs at Easter,
coming down every stair for my basket,
taking each step with a tiny breath,
the room brimful with sunlight.
You give the words to me one by one, off your own plate.
The room grows hot with twittering.
It is hot between your two arms, and our sobs
are hot. It is so bright here that nothing dares blossom,
not even fear.
vii.
When they tell you to breathe, you breathe,
and you watch the square of daylight.
You breathe, and you think of the last, left things -
the last thing you said on the telephone,
the last word you spelled in your diary,
the spoons, sticky with jam on the countertop.
You breathe, and their faces are all eyes.
You breathe, and their faces are shut white shells.
You breathe, and their faces begin to swim,
one over the other, the instruments hovering, alien,
and the faces of the geraniums begin to make a kind of sense,
and the light bleeds a little, and then it comes:
dark, sudden, and soft. It makes its home in you for hours,
even under the fluorescent buzzing. It comes then,
and then you belong to them utterly,
and then you do not belong to me.
viii.
Our murmurs ripen,
the weak light in the windows
deepening to gold.
ix.
Of course now I'm alone with it.
You wait all day to be alone, watching the clock,
shuffling, mumbling through the tiresome
mechanical pieces of daylight: little comfort
after little comfort. Breakfast:
usefully absorbing, opiate spoonful after opiate
spoonful, and the clatter of conversation,
high-throated, over the dishes. Soap and water,
activity, song: everything keeps us apart,
but we think of each other, hungry if terrified.
It isn't close. I can't discuss it.
It breathes, sleepy and lonesome, across the house,
lost in the smear of faces, its breath
obscure amid laughing and yelling - the guests
with their casseroles.
x.
The room filled up with it before -
I may have called it Jesus. Wrapped
in white linen, but warm
as a new animal, I waited. The blue moon
that trembled, cut into stripes by the blinds,
on the bathwater, wet my pillow and my hair.
And your hand dried them both, your hand heavy with rings.
The low music, the slow
dark honey of your throat, the currents of aquamarine,
suffused everything - my new aquatic kingdom.
I slipped under its spell like a pale, slick stone.
When you had gone, your notes circled me still, like small fishes.
The light under the door, and your practical footsteps
blurred as if looked at through water. My heart
folded into its petals.
xi.
But we're alone at last, alone
over my cup of tea, the flickering TV.
The house drains of its purpose
simply, as if a tube
were sewn into it, pumping continually.
Rhythms are not kind tonight. Clocks, snoring,
the helpless busy signal - what do they want?
To clear the air with their regularity? I am alone
with it, and there is nothing between us.
The flowers have lost all sense of independence.
They nod their low heads at every table,
yellow and wan: they are not fetishes,
or jungle undergrowth. They protect nothing.
It comes quickly through the lack of atmosphere.
Its slow mouth pursues me.
I fill the house with walking. I turn on lights,
I turn them off. I sit next to you on the couch,
and it sits between us. Under the covers,
I hide, the old standby. The lights all low:
ten minutes, fifteen, the working of its jaws.
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