Part 14 (1/2)

And when she'd make her circuit of the ice, Aided and abetted by Virgil's wife, I would cry out, 'My sweet, who wears the bays In our green land above, whose is the life Most dedicated and exemplary?'

And she: 'I have closed my widowed ears To the sulphurous news of poets and poetry.

Why could you not have, oftener, in our years Unclenched, and come down laughing from your room And walked the twilight with me and your children Like that one evening of elder bloom And hay, when the wild roses were fading?'

And (as some maker gaffs me in the neck) 'You weren't the worst. You aspired to a kind, Indifferent, faults-on-both-sides tact.

You left us first, and then those books, behind.'

The Otter

When you plunged

The light of Tuscany wavered And swung through the pool From top to bottom.

I loved your wet head and smas.h.i.+ng crawl, Your fine swimmer's back and shoulders Surfacing and surfacing again This year and every year since.

I sat dry-throated on the warm stones.

You were beyond me.

The mellowed clarities, the grape-deep air Thinned and disappointed.

Thank G.o.d for the slow loadening, When I hold you now We are close and deep As the atmosphere on water.

My two hands are plumbed water.

You are my palpable, lithe Otter of memory In the pool of the moment, Turning to swim on your back, Each silent, thigh-shaking kick Retilting the light, Heaving the cool at your neck.

And suddenly you're out, Back again, intent as ever, Heavy and frisky in your freshened pelt, Printing the stones.

The Skunk

Up, black, striped and damasked like the chasuble

At a funeral Ma.s.s, the skunk's tail Paraded the skunk. Night after night I expected her like a visitor.

The refrigerator whinnied into silence.

My desk light softened beyond the verandah.

Small oranges loomed in the orange tree.

I began to be tense as a voyeur.

After eleven years I was composing Love-letters again, broaching the word 'wife'

Like a stored cask, as if its slender vowel Had mutated into the night earth and air Of California. The beautiful, useless Tang of eucalyptus spelt your absence.

The aftermath of a mouthful of wine Was like inhaling you off a cold pillow.

And there she was, the intent and glamorous, Ordinary, mysterious skunk, Mythologized, demythologized, Snuffing the boards five feet beyond me.

It all came back to me last night, stirred By the sootfall of your things at bedtime, Your head-down, tail-up hunt in a bottom drawer For the black plunge-line nightdress.

A Dream of Jealousy

Walking with you and another lady

In wooded parkland, the whispering gra.s.s Ran its fingers through our guessing silence And the trees opened into a shady Unexpected clearing where we sat down.

I think the candour of the light dismayed us.

We talked about desire and being jealous, Our conversation a loose single gown Or a white picnic tablecloth spread out Like a book of manners in the wilderness.

'Show me,' I said to our companion, 'what I have much coveted, your breast's mauve star.'

And she consented. Oh neither these verses Nor my prudence, love, can heal your wounded stare.