Grace, Fallen from - Marianne Boruch Wesleyan Poetry Series

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Spring, in Five Parts

       O Gods of Smallest Clarity

       Acknowledgments

       Grace, Fallen from

      A MOMENT

      Maybe it’s common, this sort

      of first meeting. But once, before a guest house

      in Germany, the friend

      of a friend to come by, and dinner—

      that’s it, we’ll go to dinner, have the famous

      spargel, that rare white asparagus, only

      in May, our evening pre-arranged by phone,

      by email. I need to say again we

      hadn’t met. Outside I stood

      at the door, it being spring, every tree

      gloriously poised. And a stranger,

      another woman, she too waiting

      but near the curb, looking

      this way and that, attentive to traffic, hours

      from dusk because we were north,

      near the sea. And tall, she was towering,

      older than I was, hugely

      made-up, such meticulous work

      behind that elegant finish. Then the friend

      of my friend—could that be?—his

      parking, his pulling himself

      out of that tiny car.

      Please understand. I’m usually

      right there rushing in, because the world

      requires that, loves the quickening

      of that. But I was

      or I wasn’t. Or I was small

      but there is smaller. To my left, a door.

      Some tree flowering at my right.

      I watched as he

      to that woman said my name

      so charmingly, a question, tilting

      his head, are you . . . ? sorry to disturb,

      are you . . . ? And in that pause—

      her vague focusing on him, her loose

      finding him now—I leaned forward,

      simply curious: what

      would she say? smile? yes? tell him yes?

      So thread breaks. So water in a glass

      clouds and maybe it clears.

      So I waited, giving up

      everything, to anyone,

      just like that.

I

      STILL LIFE

      Someone arranged them in 1620.

      Someone found the rare lemon and paid

      a lot and neighbored it next

      to the plain pear, the plain

      apple of the lost garden, the glass

      of wine, set down mid-sip—

      don’t drink it, someone said, it’s for

      the painting. And the rabbit skull—

      whose idea was that? There had been

      a pistol but someone was told, no,

      put that away, into the box with a key

      though the key had been

      misplaced now for a year. The artist

      wanted light too, for the shadows.

      So the table had to be moved. Somewhere

      I dreamt the diary entry

      on this, reading the impossible

      Dutch quite well, thank you, and I can

      translate it here, someone writing

       it is spring, after all, and Herr Müller

      wants a window of it in the painting, almost

      a line of poetry, I thought even then,

      in the dream, impressed

      with that “spring after all,” that

      “window of it” especially, how sweet

      and to the point it came over

      into English with no effort at all

      as I slept through the night. It was heavy,

      that table. Two workers were called

      from the east meadow to lift

      and grunt and carry it

      across the room, just those

      few yards. Of course one of them

      exaggerated the pain in his shoulder.

      Not the older, the younger man.

      No good reason

      to cry out like that. But this

      was art. And he did, something

      sharp and in the air that

      one time. All of them turning then,

      however slightly. And there he was,

      eyes closed, not much

      more than a boy, before

      the talk of beauty

      started up again.

      NEW PAPER

      under a pen isn’t

      snow. I see the real thing

      out my window piled up

      in cold sunlight. It just isn’t.

      Isn’t a lapse

      of anyone’s memory though

      that might help me sleep. I’m anyone

      at night.

      New paper getting inked up

      already with words. Revision: inked up

      already with these words.

      But it is, it is

      a cold war movie

      about Russia. Lots of tundra, and little

      mustached figures bundled up

      in the corner, waiting

      to do something. On skis.

      Or dog sleds. A throw-back. Before

      the Revolution? Before the Revolution.

      Or not. I can’t make it out

      for the snow locked

      back in that theater,

      voices that blast

      the eardrum

      straight, such would-be

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