Читать книгу The Poem She Didn't Write and Other Poems - Olena Kalytiak Davis - Страница 10

Robert Lowell

The dream, I don’t remember how it went,

For I don’t really dream or count or know

Why Robert Lowell: the only poet shade sent

To acknowledge my cool ambition, light my cigarette.

This is the decade of aughts and oughts

And I am still naught. I am forty. In a tight

T-shirt over my small ignoble breasts reading:

“ALL’S MISALLIANCE”. Downward woman,

Upward fish, said to him: What is it that you wish?

Sir, on a brackish reach of shoal, is that

Where we first met? I want to say it is

But however impressive rhetoric that...

It wouldn’t be “true”. I am a fraction more,

Though, Sir, much much less than you. I

Know how to change neither myself nor

Earth nor sky. I don’t even try. Sailor,

Cousin, Cal, though I am dark and against

The grain, I don’t do what I do and I am

Not plain. And though I stare I can’t see

My face. Or hands. Or hair. Lowell: In a nother

Ten years’ dream path life I would have fallen

Heels over your pretty hellish head,

I would have asked, and what would you have said?

Said? Without vision how can I improvise?

Without imprimatur how can I mature?

Without ground, how can I grind (the cool-

Ing grindstone of whose ambition?), how can I stand?

Said: Sir, Sad. I still breathe the ether of my first

Marriage feast and, man, it’s bad. I am full-famished.

Famished-full. Breed? Idiot up, pedant down,

And that there rag, that’s my wedding gown. Not to mention

Incest, parricide, Sir, miscegenation...

Naked in my raincoat, singing up my

Second rate, I wake now to find myself

This long this late. This low. Alone. If poisonous

Minerals, and if that tree... Which part is dream

And which part life? Which part poet which part

Wife? Which parts his, theirs, and which part wholly

Mine? I see. I steal. Where is the part of bringing it

Back to what you (i mean I!) really feel? Why, Mr. Robert

Lowell, why do we dream count marry die? Who strewed

These flowers at my feet, and will he be back

To make it nice and neat? Green and doomed,

When will I finally learn how and when to leave a room?

If lecherous goats... and if serpents envious...

MY GOD WHERE IS MOTHERFUCKING YOURS, HIS,

MINE, OURS, MERCY BEING EASY, AND GLORIOUS?

no, i would have said: No. sorry, sir, but i’m

the kind that dare dispute with thee as you/

i do with me. i hope you don’t mind.

i don’t know how to have and hold. keep what?

keep where? i lose and fold. unable to make

or mark (or count) as i am taught and told,