Read Online Poems 1962-2012 by Louise Glück - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Louise Glück
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low shrubs.
You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:
from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.
MATINS
The sun shines; by the mailbox, leaves
of the divided birch tree folded, pleated like fins.
Underneath, hollow stems of the white daffodils, Ice Wings, Cantatrice; dark
leaves of the wild violet. Noah says
depressives hate the spring, imbalance
between the inner and the outer world. I make
another caseâbeing depressed, yes, but in a sense passionately
attached to the living tree, my body
actually curled in the split trunk, almost at peace, in the evening rain
almost able to feel
sap frothing and rising: Noah says this is
an error of depressives, identifying
with a tree, whereas the happy heart
wanders the garden like a falling leaf, a figure for
the part, not the whole.
MATINS
Unreachable father, when we were first
exiled from heaven, you made
a replica, a place in one sense
different from heaven, being
designed to teach a lesson: otherwise
the sameâbeauty on either side, beauty
without alternativeâ Except
we didnât know what was the lesson. Left alone,
we exhausted each other. Years
of darkness followed; we took turns
working the garden, the first tears
filling our eyes as earth
misted with petals, some
dark red, some flesh coloredâ
We never thought of you
whom we were learning to worship.
We merely knew it wasnât human nature to love
only what returns love.
TRILLIUM
When I woke up I was in a forest. The dark
seemed natural, the sky through the pine trees
thick with many lights.
I knew nothing; I could do nothing but see.
And as I watched, all the lights of heaven
faded to make a single thing, a fire
burning through the cool firs.
Then it wasnât possible any longer
to stare at heaven and not be destroyed.
Are there souls that need
deathâs presence, as I require protection?
I think if I speak long enough
I will answer that question, I will see
whatever they see, a ladder
reaching through the firs, whatever
calls them to exchange their livesâ
Think what I understand already.
I woke up ignorant in a forest;
only a moment ago, I didnât know my voice
if one were given me
would be so full of grief, my sentences
like cries strung together.
I didnât even know I felt grief
until that word came, until I felt
rain streaming from me.
LAMIUM
This is how you live when you have a cold heart.
As I do: in shadows, trailing over cool rock,
under the great maple trees.
The sun hardly touches me.
Sometimes I see it in early spring, rising very far away.
Then leaves grow over it, completely hiding it. I feel it
glinting through the leaves, erratic,
like someone hitting the side of a glass with a metal spoon.
Living things donât all require
light in the same degree. Some of us
make our own light: a silver leaf
like a path no one can use, a shallow
lake of silver in the darkness under the great maples.
But you know this already.
You and the others who think
you live for truth and, by extension, love
all that is cold.
SNOWDROPS
Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.
I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didnât expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest springâ
afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy
in the raw wind of the new world.
CLEAR MORNING
Iâve watched you long enough,
I can speak to you any way I likeâ
Iâve submitted to your preferences, observing patiently
the things you love, speaking
through vehicles only, in
details of earth, as you prefer,
tendrils
of blue clematis, light
of early eveningâ
you would
You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:
from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.
MATINS
The sun shines; by the mailbox, leaves
of the divided birch tree folded, pleated like fins.
Underneath, hollow stems of the white daffodils, Ice Wings, Cantatrice; dark
leaves of the wild violet. Noah says
depressives hate the spring, imbalance
between the inner and the outer world. I make
another caseâbeing depressed, yes, but in a sense passionately
attached to the living tree, my body
actually curled in the split trunk, almost at peace, in the evening rain
almost able to feel
sap frothing and rising: Noah says this is
an error of depressives, identifying
with a tree, whereas the happy heart
wanders the garden like a falling leaf, a figure for
the part, not the whole.
MATINS
Unreachable father, when we were first
exiled from heaven, you made
a replica, a place in one sense
different from heaven, being
designed to teach a lesson: otherwise
the sameâbeauty on either side, beauty
without alternativeâ Except
we didnât know what was the lesson. Left alone,
we exhausted each other. Years
of darkness followed; we took turns
working the garden, the first tears
filling our eyes as earth
misted with petals, some
dark red, some flesh coloredâ
We never thought of you
whom we were learning to worship.
We merely knew it wasnât human nature to love
only what returns love.
TRILLIUM
When I woke up I was in a forest. The dark
seemed natural, the sky through the pine trees
thick with many lights.
I knew nothing; I could do nothing but see.
And as I watched, all the lights of heaven
faded to make a single thing, a fire
burning through the cool firs.
Then it wasnât possible any longer
to stare at heaven and not be destroyed.
Are there souls that need
deathâs presence, as I require protection?
I think if I speak long enough
I will answer that question, I will see
whatever they see, a ladder
reaching through the firs, whatever
calls them to exchange their livesâ
Think what I understand already.
I woke up ignorant in a forest;
only a moment ago, I didnât know my voice
if one were given me
would be so full of grief, my sentences
like cries strung together.
I didnât even know I felt grief
until that word came, until I felt
rain streaming from me.
LAMIUM
This is how you live when you have a cold heart.
As I do: in shadows, trailing over cool rock,
under the great maple trees.
The sun hardly touches me.
Sometimes I see it in early spring, rising very far away.
Then leaves grow over it, completely hiding it. I feel it
glinting through the leaves, erratic,
like someone hitting the side of a glass with a metal spoon.
Living things donât all require
light in the same degree. Some of us
make our own light: a silver leaf
like a path no one can use, a shallow
lake of silver in the darkness under the great maples.
But you know this already.
You and the others who think
you live for truth and, by extension, love
all that is cold.
SNOWDROPS
Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.
I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didnât expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest springâ
afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy
in the raw wind of the new world.
CLEAR MORNING
Iâve watched you long enough,
I can speak to you any way I likeâ
Iâve submitted to your preferences, observing patiently
the things you love, speaking
through vehicles only, in
details of earth, as you prefer,
tendrils
of blue clematis, light
of early eveningâ
you would
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