SONGS TO A DEAD WOMAN

You
 
1.
When you rose up in the elevator, you were not holding her in your arms.
When you stretched out in bed, you were not holding her in your arms.
When you opened the window, you were not holding her in your arms.
Such a chill could make you catch a cold.
When you took the dizziness pills, you were not holding her in your arms.
When you stood on the windowsill, you were not holding her in your arms.
 
She lies in bed, your daughter.  From time to time she cries out in her sleep.
People gather, bobbing their heads around her blanket,
bobbing like all her childhood see-saws, gathering against her.
Move over, children; let her go first.
 
You rose through floor after floor,
the umbilical cord adrift behind you
like the ribbon of a gift
that will never be given.

2.
You did not recognize in her your own smell. You did not call for help.
You did not scatter the soil that covers your body, add it to her toy box.
You did not leave her a single word to hold her like a balustrade.
 
3. 
The bitterness of death did not depart from any of the sweets I served, a wrapper fluttering slowly to the floor,
not like a body thudding into the earth, seeking to pierce the netherworld by virtue of its momentum.
The bitterness of death did not depart from any of the simple questions,
Which belly did I come out of, your daughter is asking at bedtime,
where is this belly, what is it holding now.
 
 
Your Daughter
 
1.
Her black eyes
remember how you went away and didn’t come back
and you left only the color of the road
in her pupils as a souvenir. 
 
2.
Behold, who is this that cometh up from the kindergarten,
laying down her drawings in which I am not drawn.
She scatters the grains of rice on the plate to create a thin lace.
And she does not give a single word away.
May the air between us not be filled even for a moment.
buffer zone.
  
3.
From the window you can see the playground
which is painted in primary colors,
colors simple and pretty,
so close to the house.
 
4.
Sometimes it seems as if closeness were possible,
as between two letters of a word
written with diacritical marks instead of vowels.
 
But only the frame
catches the slamming door
in its two hands.
The handle straightens like a blank line.
 
And the sole moment of truth
is between one step and another
when equilibrium
is a lie.
 

Your Husband

1.
If you cross his mind, I don’t know;
to me, his journals are as closed as a grave.
 
Every morning a ball of actions is hurled towards him.
He has no time but to catch it.
He has no labor but to return it to its orbit.
His rest breaks are as long as a body would remain in the air. 

2.
Two boxes in the bedroom.
Photos of the first wedding above photos of the second.
In one he bends toward me or toward you.
His large hand is binding.
 
3.
The baby’s first kick
didn’t excite him as a first kick.
His eyes lit up and went dark
like a silent siren blinking.
 
4.
Sometimes in the morning your name is spoken,
rushing our speech so as not to tread on you by accident.
Most of the time you are lying there, quiet,
a room that hasn’t been swept.

 
Your House
 
1.
In the sink dishes strike one another as if not drawn with the same flower.
Sometimes a dream covers itself in your shadow, but it seems like only the darkness
that comes after a day’s work.
One proud step and you are already lost
from the hand of the family that is gripping the balustrade,
and then, with no heaviness,
backing again into the room.
 
2.
No, maybe only the poem forgets.
Do not come in. Do not come and mar the clean taps in the house.
Do not give any nostalgia to the man whose life you made into a chimney,
and do not send ghosts into my pregnant stomach
about to give birth.
 
Do not cause damage; what is between you and me
will never be settled.
 
I am writing you from the hurt of the language of the second person
which doesn’t have a new fragrance to give.
Curse of Rachel and Leah burning on my tongue,
this curse of she who does not know which of them she is.
 

Your Victory
 
1.
They are not winning, the oil paints that the sun solders into a rainbow;
it is not winning, the ball that descends easily,
as if there were no rock behind it
rolling down the slope.
 
Only contiguity, no gaiety.
Only a tired woman,
extended as a prosthetic hand.
And the playground close to home
ridiculing her with its demands.
 
2.
I will not go on writing. I must get up
prepare a meal for the man who is returning home.
Pick up the little girl from kindergarten.
Buy her new clothes.
Coats, hats, double lining, scarves,
warm and buttoned things,
coverlets and more coverlets.

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