USA

ckeyes@erols.com

MARINA, I WRITE YOU

"Send me poems. Describe ordinary life,
where you live and write, Moscow, the air, your self in Space."
Marina Tsvetayeva to Boris Pasternak

from the bud-tip of the new century,
from the continent that trashes suffering
as defect, from the backyards
of suburbia, from the paisleyed light
cast by autumn trees, from where I sit
brooding. Once, when I was young,
there was a man I loved
as you love your Boris. Married,
but what a mustache, what fanciful
hands. He adored the slope
of my neck and said, You can do anything,
then turned away, patting his shirt pocket
for a match. Love is a metaphor
for flame. I pace the living room,
light a cigarillo, stand
at the tall window waiting
for the ridged bark of the maples
to flush sunset pink.

No one can suffer like a Russian.
Believe me, I've tried. You, Akhmatova,
Mandelstam. The persecution, the adoration.
I'm trapped in a country so in love
with itself no one subscribes
to exile. As if prosperity
were all of life, no privation
but this rude pounding on the door
of my heart: Thou shalt not
covet . . . what sense did it make?
But here I am raking the dark,
pinched leaves from the November sill,
stirring the past to life.

from the Larcom Review

DOLMEN ON
THE KILKENNY ROAD

How can we tell the stones
from their sadness each one weighted
into the earth and each other
like mourners at a funeral
an arm across a shoulder a son
trying to comfort his mother
a mother leaning into a daughter

What makes them impervious
to decay Is it the balance
of heft upon heft the way
the sun darts clean
as a snake's tongue
between crevices the light
penetrating to the center
at precisely the time Earth shifts
its enormous bulk

Around us a shiver
of loneliness the fields bordering
the dolmen rimmed by a highway
where trucks run fast to Kilkenny
and we stop at the Dolmen Mobil
to check the tires the attendant
with one molar missing from the side
of his smile everything about this
rock-bedecked island missing something
and I find a place inside myself
room for the long stones and the past
rising so hard and clean
out of the green earth

from Talking River Review

BEACH WITH WHITE SHOE

Poised
on a high stretch of beach
where the tide won't pull it back
into the surf, a single white shoe
gapes open on the sand
to remind me of the sweetness contained
in ordinary things, the poignancy
of their loss.
And of beaches
where shoes flung onto the sand
were attached to the feet and legs
of men who cast themselves from ships.

My brother at nineteen. Who killed.
Who took shrapnel in the gut.
Who looked his enemy in the eye
and prayed not to be killed.
Who gave thanks when he was left
bleeding in a ditch.

Back home, he showed us
his Purple Heart. I didn't know
what it meant, could only stare
in horror that summer at the beach
when he wore those skinny trunks
and I saw the sudden cave in his belly,
the humps where thread knit
the edges of his flesh.

What if I need a single shoe
to remind me of Jim
and the question he asked me:
why did Daddy let him go to war?
As if I knew,
as if anyone could have held him back.

from Spoon River Poetry Review

GERMAN SHEPHERD

He stands like a sentinel at the end
of the path and in the instant before
he charges, my mind records everything:
the burning bush towards which I keep walking,
the pebbles beneath my feet, like omens pointing
the way, like fears wincing. I remember how
I once felt contempt for a lover when he refused
to walk by a neighborhood dog, chained and asleep
in the driveway. Dogs can smell fear.
Dogs adore the surge of power when a human trembles
and proves soft and delicious as raw meat.
My heart thumps as the dog gallops towards me.
I love the danger and remember to tuck my hands
into pockets, to hum a little non-fear tune,
and say as he draws to a halt, "Nice dog, nice pup."

We would have made hell for each other, my lover
and I. Then why does he haunt me, like some shadow
cast across my path, reminding me of what's past,
dead or dying. My feet grow thinner each year.
I grow closer to the bone.

from Spoon River Poetry Review

HYMN FOR THE RIVER
Santa Elena Canyon, The Rio Grande

What the conquistadors felt
when they named this canyon
for the fierce and pious empress
mother of Constantine, I can only guess.
There's not a trace of holiness
here unless you find something sacred
in the liquid seam of river binding
nation to nation: Mexico's Chihuahua
a sheer cliff; Texas a pebbled bank
laced with green. And it's hot,

as only desert Texas can be hot.
We shuck our boots and wade
to the knee-deep center then plant
our heels to feel the current flow
between our legs. Indecent. Wonderful.

Stumbling ashore, we lie flat
on our backs so we can watch a raptor
ride a slim updraft of air, so high
I think I'm imagining him. But I don't
imagine the warmth of your hand on my hip.

I'm not alone though I feel
the loneliness of sandstone and ocotillo
like a singing along my spine.
So here's a hymn for the river
whose motion is silver. For canyon walls
that rise like the arms of a supplicant
in a place holier than its name.

from Texas Poetry Calendar 2002

© All Copyright, Claire Keyes.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.