Читать книгу Grace, Fallen from - Marianne Boruch - Страница 9

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.