LOVE POEM
I
It wants to be dark, lavish
and exact: carved wet slate
bedded in an argument of peat.
With the precision of a fetishist
it fastens on detail: the thick veins
in your throat, the crooked line
of an eyebrow, the crook of an arm--
a tender dismemberment.
It wants to address one eccentric soul,
but always comes back to the physical.
II
It wants to be personal and minute,
but only pays its keep when it succumbs
to the universal: effacing the dear
Sir or Madam addressed,
it scatters its fondness to an audience.
The poem knows it is an act
of violence; and it resents the fact.
III
It is always, finally, about the I
and not the you. You are a dim
memory fleshed into present tense.
You are my lover. You are a woman
I saw on the bus six months ago,
brushing her hair back with your hand.
You are my husband. Or you were.
You were a man before I changed your name.
IV
Nothing I say will do you the least
atom of justice. Your hair
is very good hair and I like it.
You can read sheet music, and dissect
the workings of a microchip.
I admire that. Darling,
if somehow I could tell the exact truth,
all the girls would be after you.
Boys, too. Birds, plants. Even dining tables
would walk to your doorstep, hopeful, solemn,
with vases of peonies wobbling on their backs.
V
Or so I like to think. I'm not half
clever enough to chew out of the trap
of the lyric--still, you're real enough,
for all this dithering. Yesterday
you stood on your doorstep with folded arms,
calling your dog: the self embodied
in that moment, a solid fact,
though even then I couldn't help
thinking of you as my favorite text,
thick and witty, in your leather vest.
"Love Poem" was awarded an Academy of American Poets prize at Washington University in 1994.
MARGARET'S WALTZ
I
Say we watched a vulture
take off the ground
and float above the topmost
branches of the tulip poplars.
II
The angle of her limbs
was acute; her self-conscious
rattling speech, painful--
as if the heart itself
rattled its bony cage.
I knew her for a year,
and the only time
I ever saw her living
in her body as if she owned it,
our Maggie danced--
taking the floor as if
she owned the floor as well.
The fiddle, the flute's hollow,
the fluid backbone of piano,
seemed to emerge from her:
she carried the music
in her body utterly.
III
Her eyes stared
out of that pocked face
like the blue flame of an oven,
as if they would burn holes
in all our hearts. And did.
Three local marriages
and two long-time couplings
broke open--although she
never touched a man
in private--before Margaret left town.
IV
That was when we compared
notes, and found that she--
our loving, nervy, attentive
girlfriend--had been different
with each of us, with each
of her closest friends. Her heart
rattled and did not give
quarter. Generous with her time
and lavish with her compliments,
Maggie-Lynn hoarded her self
as if it were too precious
a thing for us to smudge,
or as if it had been lost
in that brittle cage
and she had forgotten
how to claim her birthright--
forgotten her own name.
V
If only they'd had an affair,
I might have forgiven her:
Margaret the starveling,
a creature made of need.
She scavenged my lover's heart,
and never gave him back
anything but courtesy
and puzzling, cruel flirtation.
VI
I asked Meg once what she
wanted to be called. She said, "I like it
when each of my friends gives me
a nickname--something that's theirs,
something no one else
calls me." She asked sweetly
to be named, made, by everyone.
VII
Say we watched a vulture,
and were too busy watching
the gracious, easy circle
of wings, the fluid shoulders,
to see the skeleton
pierce it from within.
Say we were too busy
hurting and admiring
to offer what she needed,
what never depended
on Meg's cleverness,
Mag's mastery, Margaret's waltz.
VIII
I wish she were here.
I wish I could ask again
and insist on an answer:
"Maggie, what do you want
to be called--what name
do you call yourself alone?
If nobody were here to hear
you speak, what would you say?"
IX
Say I'm afraid. Say
I saved her number for years,
and never used it. Say that need
is a terrible, eating thing.
Say I'm afraid that nobody
can feed that bird without
turning to carrion.
Say what I've said
for years now: all the terrified
excuses for retreat. Say that I've run
from my lost friend, as if her pain--
like a cornered rabbit
or a wounded bird of prey--
would bite me to the bone.
Orton home page
Poetry, Part I
Poetry, Part II
Poetry, PartIV
Poetry from The Literary Review