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The Poetry Of.
Anita Dahlman...............................................
Lolly
Oh this girl, she troubles.
Petulance ensnared by chaos,
like Kate, her temper provokes.
And just 13, she chases
kisses, grabs the boy,
the most recent of her notice.
A child still, parading with her baby-
doll, unconscious of the stirrings
her rounding body calls to men,
who give attentive notice to the
flaunting innocence, all low-cut
and poured-on cloth following every
curve to trouble and provoke.
The boys sing her name:
Lolly, oh Lolly, and wink
among themselves, daddy
frowns and I reach to turn
her home.
This girl who will not listen,
awkward and stunning at once,
must harangue at each request.
Sass and challenge follow any
reproach, with whoops and hollers,
skipping into a prancing gambol,
high jinx and mayhem in her wake.
Oh, Lolly troubles and evokes
a high-alert siren alarm
in a reckless, careening tumble,
from the worried arms of home.
Translation, for Elsa
She doesn't get the words in any language,
too many names and foreign tongues
are now congealed in her dry mind
where articulation once revelled.
You must translate for her now--
the hands on the clock,
the voice on the phone,
the names of her children.
She will ask if he has had his supper,
remind her then his light has passed
beyond the world he once awoke in,
tell her this and still she will ask.
Once her feet were lithesome,
her bearing graceful,
now her feet are stumbling,
she falls, she is sinking down.
Her mind that mastered French and German,
Swedish, her native tongue, turned English
into music, has lost its lyric sound--
the passing is unnoticed, she is falling,
to the ground.
Dress her in her widow's black
to watch outside the window.
She asks when are they coming
to take her far from home.
She asks when will he get here,
and who is at the door,
laid out upon a stretcher,
his last exit from his home.
And on Sunday when you visit
and drive her round the town,
she'll ask when is the service,
and when will he come home.
Remind her then the months have passed
since we kissed him in the church light,
and stills she asks and wonders
was he dead and buried still.
For her the time moves backward
and forward all the same,
translation now is useless
she is asking to be home.
The Perfect Daughter
The first-born child claims
her right of ownership,
possession of the sacred legacy
the family seed bestowed her:
golden curls, Venus curves, and heavy orbs.
She grasps the sword
of ancient kin to strike
those born to lessened lineage
on strangest ground that soils
the weave of family linen.
A first-born child will never cede
her claims to rituals passed over
from the father's land:
the risen loaf, the groaning table,
her candled wreath.
She will not consent to age:
never say she is eldest,
her mirror calms the age-old fear,
though first of five
the youngest cannot match her.
First-born daughter endowed by seed,
the germ that now infests her
ruthless greed to lay her claim
of absolute entitlement
before the lesser-born.
She walks in chains on barren floors,
in rooms now vacant of all light,
and makes the bed where danger laid
her mother's cruel injury,
her father's fatal trap.
The perfect daughter weighs her will
to castigate the youngest:
admonishing with blood-soaked sheets,
denounced by whitest linen
against the new-born proof.
