Classic Poetry Series Louise Gluck

48

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive

---

And a voice in the kitchen was always complaining about the heat,

wanting the heat to break.

 

Then the heat broke, the night was clear.

And you thought of ?the boy or girl you'd be meeting later.

And you thought of ?walking into the woods and lying down,

practicing all those things you were learning in the water.

And though sometimes you couldn't see the person you were with,

there was no substitute for that person.

 

The summer night glowed; in the field, fireflies were glinting.

And for those who understood such things, the stars were sending messages:

You will leave the village where you were born

and in another country you'll become very rich, very powerful,

but always you will mourn something you left behind, even though

you can't say what it was,

and eventually you will return to seek it.

 

Louise Gluck

49

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive

---

Mock Orange

 

It is not the moon, I tell you.

It is these flowers

lighting the yard.

 

I hate them.

I hate them as I hate sex,

the man's mouth

sealing my mouth, the man's

paralyzing body—

 

and the cry that always escapes,

the low, humiliating

premise of union—

 

In my mind tonight

I hear the question and pursuing answer

fused in one sound

that mounts and mounts and then

is split into the old selves,

the tired antagonisms. Do you see?

We were made fools of.

And the scent of mock orange

drifts through the window.

 

How can I rest?

How can I be content

when there is still

that odor in the world?

 

Louise Gluck

50

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive

---

Mother and Child

 

We're all dreamers; we don't know who we are.

 

Some machine made us; machine of the world, the constricting family.

Then back to the world, polished by soft whips.

 

We dream; we don't remember.

 

Machine of the family: dark fur, forests of the mother's body.

Machine of the mother: white city inside her.

 

And before that: earth and water.

Moss between rocks, pieces of leaves and grass.

 

And before, cells in a great darkness.

And before that, the veiled world.

 

This is why you were born: to silence me.

Cells of my mother and father, it is your turn

to be pivotal, to be the masterpiece.

 

I improvised; I never remembered.

Now it's your turn to be driven;

you're the one who demands to know:

 

Why do I suffer? Why am I ignorant?

Cells in a great darkness. Some machine made us;

it is your turn to address it, to go back asking

what am I for? What am I for?

 

Louise Gluck

51

www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive

---

Nocturne

 

Mother died last night,

Mother who never dies.

 

Winter was in the air,

many months away

but in the air nevertheless.

 

It was the tenth of May.

Hyacinth and apple blossom

bloomed in the back garden.

 

We could hear

Maria singing songs from Czechoslovakia?—

 

How alone I am?—

songs of that kind.

 

How alone I am,

no mother, no father?—

my brain seems so empty without them.

 

Aromas drifted out of the earth;

the dishes were in the sink,

rinsed but not stacked.

 

Under the full moon

Maria was folding the washing;

the stiff? sheets became

dry white rectangles of? moonlight.

 

How alone I am, but in music

my desolation is my rejoicing.

 

It was the tenth of May

as it had been the ninth, the eighth.

 

Mother slept in her bed,

her arms outstretched, her head

balanced between them.