Read Online Poems 1962-2012 by Louise Glück - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Louise Glück
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never accept
a voice like mine, indifferent
to the objects you busily name,
your mouths
small circles of aweâ
And all this time
I indulged your limitation, thinking
you would cast it aside yourselves sooner or later,
thinking matter could not absorb your gaze foreverâ
obstacle of the clematis painting
blue flowers on the porch windowâ
I cannot go on
restricting myself to images
because you think it is your right
to dispute my meaning:
I am prepared now to force
clarity upon you.
SPRING SNOW
Look at the night sky:
I have two selves, two kinds of power.
I am here with you, at the window,
watching you react. Yesterday
the moon rose over moist earth in the lower garden.
Now the earth glitters like the moon,
like dead matter crusted with light.
You can close your eyes now.
I have heard your cries, and cries before yours,
and the demand behind them.
I have shown you what you want:
not belief, but capitulation
to authority, which depends on violence.
END OF WINTER
Over the still world, a bird calls
waking solitary among black boughs.
You wanted to be born; I let you be born.
When has my grief ever gotten
in the way of your pleasure?
Plunging ahead
into the dark and light at the same time
eager for sensation
as though you were some new thing, wanting
to express yourselves
all brilliance, all vivacity
never thinking
this would cost you anything,
never imagining the sound of my voice
as anything but part of youâ
you wonât hear it in the other world,
not clearly again,
not in birdcall or human cry,
not the clear sound, only
persistent echoing
in all sound that means goodbye, goodbyeâ
the one continuous line
that binds us to each other.
MATINS
Forgive me if I say I love you: the powerful
are always lied to since the weak are always
driven by panic. I cannot love
what I canât conceive, and you disclose
virtually nothing: are you like the hawthorn tree,
always the same thing in the same place,
or are you more the foxglove, inconsistent, first springing up
a pink spike on the slope behind the daisies,
and the next year, purple in the rose garden? You must see
it is useless to us, this silence that promotes belief
you must be all things, the foxglove and the hawthorn tree,
the vulnerable rose and tough daisyâwe are left to think
you couldnât possibly exist. Is this
what you mean us to think, does this explain
the silence of the morning,
the crickets not yet rubbing their wings, the cats
not fighting in the yard?
MATINS
I see it is with you as with the birches:
I am not to speak to you
in the personal way. Much
has passed between us. Or
was it always only
on the one side? I am
at fault, at fault, I asked you
to be humanâI am no needier
than other people. But the absence
of all feeling, of the least
concern for meâI might as well go on
addressing the birches,
as in my former life: let them
do their worst, let them
bury me with the Romantics,
their pointed yellow leaves
falling and covering me.
SCILLA
Not I, you idiot, not self, but we, weâwaves
of sky blue like
a critique of heaven: why
do you treasure your voice
when to be one thing
is to be next to nothing?
Why do you look up? To hear
an echo like the voice
of god? You are all the same to us,
solitary, standing above us, planning
your silly lives: you go
where you are sent, like all things,
where the wind plants you,
one or another of you forever
looking down and seeing some image
of water, and hearing what? Waves,
and over waves, birds singing.
RETREATING WIND
When I made you, I loved you.
Now I pity you.
I gave you all you needed:
bed of earth, blanket of blue airâ
As I get further away from you
I see you more clearly.
Your souls should have been immense by now,
not what they are,
small talking thingsâ
I gave you every gift,
blue of the spring morning,
time you didnât know how to useâ
you
a voice like mine, indifferent
to the objects you busily name,
your mouths
small circles of aweâ
And all this time
I indulged your limitation, thinking
you would cast it aside yourselves sooner or later,
thinking matter could not absorb your gaze foreverâ
obstacle of the clematis painting
blue flowers on the porch windowâ
I cannot go on
restricting myself to images
because you think it is your right
to dispute my meaning:
I am prepared now to force
clarity upon you.
SPRING SNOW
Look at the night sky:
I have two selves, two kinds of power.
I am here with you, at the window,
watching you react. Yesterday
the moon rose over moist earth in the lower garden.
Now the earth glitters like the moon,
like dead matter crusted with light.
You can close your eyes now.
I have heard your cries, and cries before yours,
and the demand behind them.
I have shown you what you want:
not belief, but capitulation
to authority, which depends on violence.
END OF WINTER
Over the still world, a bird calls
waking solitary among black boughs.
You wanted to be born; I let you be born.
When has my grief ever gotten
in the way of your pleasure?
Plunging ahead
into the dark and light at the same time
eager for sensation
as though you were some new thing, wanting
to express yourselves
all brilliance, all vivacity
never thinking
this would cost you anything,
never imagining the sound of my voice
as anything but part of youâ
you wonât hear it in the other world,
not clearly again,
not in birdcall or human cry,
not the clear sound, only
persistent echoing
in all sound that means goodbye, goodbyeâ
the one continuous line
that binds us to each other.
MATINS
Forgive me if I say I love you: the powerful
are always lied to since the weak are always
driven by panic. I cannot love
what I canât conceive, and you disclose
virtually nothing: are you like the hawthorn tree,
always the same thing in the same place,
or are you more the foxglove, inconsistent, first springing up
a pink spike on the slope behind the daisies,
and the next year, purple in the rose garden? You must see
it is useless to us, this silence that promotes belief
you must be all things, the foxglove and the hawthorn tree,
the vulnerable rose and tough daisyâwe are left to think
you couldnât possibly exist. Is this
what you mean us to think, does this explain
the silence of the morning,
the crickets not yet rubbing their wings, the cats
not fighting in the yard?
MATINS
I see it is with you as with the birches:
I am not to speak to you
in the personal way. Much
has passed between us. Or
was it always only
on the one side? I am
at fault, at fault, I asked you
to be humanâI am no needier
than other people. But the absence
of all feeling, of the least
concern for meâI might as well go on
addressing the birches,
as in my former life: let them
do their worst, let them
bury me with the Romantics,
their pointed yellow leaves
falling and covering me.
SCILLA
Not I, you idiot, not self, but we, weâwaves
of sky blue like
a critique of heaven: why
do you treasure your voice
when to be one thing
is to be next to nothing?
Why do you look up? To hear
an echo like the voice
of god? You are all the same to us,
solitary, standing above us, planning
your silly lives: you go
where you are sent, like all things,
where the wind plants you,
one or another of you forever
looking down and seeing some image
of water, and hearing what? Waves,
and over waves, birds singing.
RETREATING WIND
When I made you, I loved you.
Now I pity you.
I gave you all you needed:
bed of earth, blanket of blue airâ
As I get further away from you
I see you more clearly.
Your souls should have been immense by now,
not what they are,
small talking thingsâ
I gave you every gift,
blue of the spring morning,
time you didnât know how to useâ
you
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