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CHAPTER 1
THE EGG
THE CHICAGO TRAIN
Across from me the whole ride Hardly stirred: just Mister with his barren Skull across the arm-rest while the kid Got his head between his mama's legs and slept. The poison That replaces air took over.
THE EGG
I Everything went in the car.
II
Until aloft beyond The sterilizer his enormous hands Swarmed, carnivorous,
III
Always nights I feel the ocean Biting at my life. By Inlet, in this net Of bays, and on. Unsafe.
THANKSGIVING
In every room, encircled by a name-
HESITATE TO CALL
Lived to see you throwing Me aside. That fought Like netted fish inside me. Saw you throbbing In my syrups. Saw you sleep. And lived to see That all that all flushed down The refuse. Done?
MY COUSIN IN APRIL
Under cerulean, amid her backyard's knobby rhubarb squats My cousin to giggle with her baby, pat His bald top. From a window I can catch them mull basil,
RETURNING A LOST CHILD
Nothing moves. In its cage, the broken Blossom of a fan sways Limply, trickling its wire, as her thin Arms, hung like flypaper, twist about the boy ...
LABOR DAY
Requiring something lovely on his arm Took me to Stamford, Connecticut, a quasi-farm,
THE WOUND
The air stiffens to a crust.
And I am fixed. Gone careful,
SILVERPOINT
My sister, by the chiming kinks Of the Atlantic Ocean, takes in light.
EARLY DECEMBER IN CROTON-ON-HUDSON
Spiked sun. The Hudson's Whittled down by ice.
CHAPTER 2
THE EDGE
THE EDGE
Time and again, time and again I tie My heart to that headboard While my quilted cries Harden against his hand. He's bored —
GRANDMOTHER IN THE GARDEN
The grass below the willow Of my daughter's wash is curled With earthworms, and the world Is measured into row on row Of unspiced houses, painted to seem real.
PICTURES OF THE PEOPLE IN THE WAR
Later I'll pull down the shade And let this fluid draw life out of the paper.
THE RACER'S WIDOW
The elements have merged into solicitude.
PORTRAIT OF THE QUEEN IN TEARS
As my father, the late star, once told me,
BRIDAL PIECE
Our honeymoon He planted us by Water. It was March. The moon Lurched like searchlights, like His murmurings across my brain —
MY NEIGHBOR IN THE MIRROR
M. le professeur in prominent senility Across the hall tidies his collected prose And poems. Returning from a shopping spree Not long ago, I caught him pausing to pose Before the landing mirror in grandiose semi-profile.
MY LIFE BEFORE DAWN
Sometimes at night I think of how we did It, me nailed in her like steel, her Over-eager on the striped contour Sheet (I later burned it) and it makes me glad I told her — in the kitchen cutting homemade bread —
THE LADY IN THE SINGLE
Cloistered as the snail and conch In Edgartown where the Atlantic Rises to deposit junk On plush, extensive sand and the pedantic
Meet for tea, amid brouhaha I have managed this peripheral still,
Jellyfish. But I have seen The slick return of one that oozed back On a breaker. Marketable sheen.
Sailor loved me once, near here.
To kiss, still tried to play Croquet with the family — like a girl almost,
The memory. And yet his ghost Took shape in smoke above the pan roast.
THE CRIPPLE IN THE SUBWAY
For awhile I thought had gotten Used to it (the leg) and hardly heard That down-hard, down-hard Upon wood, cement, etc. of the iron Trappings and I'd tell myself the memories Would also disappear, tick-
NURSE'S SONG
As though I'm fooled. That lacy body managed to forget That I have eyes, ears; dares to spring her boyfriends on the child.
SECONDS
Craved, having so long gone Empty, what he had, hardness That (my boy half-grown)
LETTER FROM OUR MAN IN BLOSSOMTIME
Often an easterly churns Emerald feathered ferns Calling to mind Aunt Rae's decrepit Framed fan as it Must have flickered in its heyday.
THE CELL
(Jeanne des Anges, Prioress of the Ursuline nuns, Loudun, France: 1635)
It's always there. My back's Bulging through linen: God Damaged me — made Unfit to guide, I guide.
THE ISLANDER
Sugar I am CALLING you. Not Journeyed all these years for this:
LETTER FROM PROVENCE
Beside the bridge's photogenic lapse into air you'll Find more interesting material.
MEMO FROM THE CAVE
O love, you airtight bird,
FIRSTBORN
The weeks go by. I shelve them,
We are eating well.
LA FORCE
Made me what I am.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Poems 1962–2012"
by .
Copyright © 2012 Louise Glück.
Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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