Читать книгу Grace, Fallen from - Marianne Boruch - Страница 18

SEVEN AUBADES FOR SUMMER

day one

I read the roof next door. I read

the shingles, their stony

overlap, the stubborn look

my grandmother gave me: I won’t

walk that street. I hate

those people. But she didn’t

say that. I was a child. And to protect

is to change the subject

and leave the wound, only

one of us

staring down and down. So it was

she clipped the brown glass

to her glasses and we

took a different route. Brick

sidewalk, weedy grass. The shrug

of a small town. And her steel,

a flash of it. One bird out there

can’t get over his song. To repeat

is to remember. To remember is to go

on and on. Anyway, my husband

said this morning, throwing back

the sheet.

day two

No one take credit. It came to me

in a dream is all anyone

can say. The dream of two sparks

makes another spark. And if only

I could think beyond and more oddly, this

stolid whatever-it-is, this stanza

a room, just a figure in a doorway

about to leave

or to enter. It was my mother

come back to life, so much younger

as I slept, plotting herself

out of a marriage. So I finally

witnessed it, the moment she opened and closed

and opened. But how did it end?

My standing there, my wanting to . . .

And the sequel, her

splintered look of no and yes. And I was

the child who emptied to say

anything at all.

That’s summer, isn’t it? The earth turned

toward instead of away. It takes a whole night

to do that. She’s a busy little bee, I heard

someone say yesterday, each word a stone

set down carefully, each weighing

a pound or two. I work on that, both

the acid and the praise. Nothing’s simple,

not even the start of the day.

day three