Selections from Ararat, 1990
A FANTASY I'll tell you something: every day people are dying. And that's just the beginning. Every day, in funeral homes, new widows are born, new orphans. They sit with their hands folded, trying to decide about this new life. Then they're in the cemetery, some of them for the first time. They're frightened of crying, sometimes of not crying. Someone leans over, tells them what to do next, which might mean saying a few words, sometimes throwing dirt in the open grave. And after that, everyone goes back to the house, which is suddenly full of visitors. The widow sits on the couch, very stately, so people line up to approach her, sometimes take her hand, sometimes embrace her. She finds something to say to everbody, thanks them, thanks them for coming. In her heart, she wants them to go away. She wants to be back in the cemetery, back in the sickroom, the hospital. She knows it isn't possible. But it's her only hope, the wish to move backward. And just a little, not so far as the marriage, the first kiss. WIDOWS My mother's playing cards with my aunt, Spite and Malice, the family pastime, the game my grandmother taught all her daughters. Midsummer: too hot to go out. Today, my aunt's ahead; she's getting the good cards. My mother's dragging, having trouble with her concentration. She can't get used to her own bed this summer. She had no trouble last summer, getting used to the floor. She learned to sleep there to be near my father. He was dying; he got a special bed. My aunt doesn't give an inch, doesn't make allowance for my mother's weariness. It's how they were raised: you show respect by fighting. To let up insults the opponent. Each player has one pile to the left, five cards in the hand. It's good to stay inside on days like this, to stay where it's cool. And this is better than other games, better than solitaire. My grandmother thought ahead; she prepared her daughters. They have cards; they have each other. They don't need any more companionship. All afternoon the game goes on but the sun doesn't move. It just keeps beating down, turning the grass yellow. That's how it must seem to my mother. And then, suddenly, something is over. My aunt's been at it longer; maybe that's why she's playing better. Her cards evaporate: that's what you want, that's the object: in the end, the one who has nothing wins. LULLABY My mother's an expert in one thing: sending people she loves into the other world. The little ones, the babies—these she rocks, whispering or singing quietly. I can't say what she did for my father; whatever it was, I'm sure it was right. It's the same thing, really, preparing a person for sleep, for death. The lullabies—they all say don't be afraid, that's how they paraphrase the heartbeat of the mother. So the living grow slowly calm; it's only the dying who can't, who refuse. The dying are like tops, like gyroscopes— they spin so rapidly they seem to be still. Then they fly apart: in my mother's arms, my sister was a cloud of atoms, of particles—that's the difference. When a child's asleep, it's still whole. My mother's seen death; she doesn't talk about the soul's integrity. She's held an infant, an old man, as by comparison the dark grew solid around them, finally changing to earth. The soul's like all matter: why would it stay intact, stay faithful to its one form, when it could be free? SAINTS In our family, there were two saints, my aunt and my grandmother. But their lives were different. My grandmother's was tranquil, even at the end. She was like a person walking in calm water; for some reason the sea couldn't bring itself to hurt her. When my aunt took the same path, the waves broke over her, they attacked her, which is how the Fates respond to a true spiritual nature. My grandmother was cautious, conservative: that's why she escaped suffering. My aunt's escaped nothing; each time the sea retreats, someone she loves is taken away. Still she won't experience the sea as evil. To her, it is what it is: where it touches land, it must turn to violence. SNOW Late December: my father and I are going to New York, to the circus. He holds me on his shoulders in the bitter wind: scraps of white paper blow over the railroad ties. My father liked to stand like this, to hold me so he couldn't see me. I remember staring straight ahead into the world my father saw; I was learning to absorb its emptiness, the heavy snow not falling, whirling around us. FIRST MEMORY Long ago, I was wounded. I lived to revenge myself against my father, not for what he was— for what I was: from the beginning of time, in childhood, I thought that pain meant I was not loved. It meant I loved.
THE WILD IRIS At the end of my suffering there was a door. Hear me out: that which you call death I remember. Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting. Then nothing. The weak sun flickered over the dry surface. It is terrible to survive as consciousness buried in the dark earth. Then it was over: that which you fear, being a soul and unable to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth bending a little. And what I took to be birds darting in low shrubs. You who do not remember passage from the other world I tell you I could speak again: whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice: from the center of my life came a great fountain, deep blue shadows on azure seawater. SNOWDROPS Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know what despair is; then winter should have meaning for you. I did not expect to survive, earth suppressing me. I didn't expect to waken again, to feel in damp earth my body able to respond again, remembering after so long how to open again in the cold light of earliest spring— afraid, yes, but among you again crying yes risk joy in the raw wind of the new world. RETREATING WIND When I made you, I loved you. Now I pity you. I gave you all you needed: bed of earth, blanket of blue air— As I get further away from you I see you more clearly. Your souls should have been immense by now, not what they are, small talking things— I gave you every gift, blue of the spring morning, time you didn't know how to use— you wanted more, the one gift reserved for another creation. Whatever you hoped, you will not find yourselves in the garden, among the growing plants. Your lives are not circular like theirs: your lives are the bird's flight which begins and ends in stillness— which begins and ends, in form echoing this arc from the white birch to the apple tree. APRIL No one's despair is like my despair— You have no place in this garden thinking such things, producing the tiresome outward signs; the man pointedly weeding an entire forest, the woman limping, refusing to change clothes or wash her hair. Do you suppose I care if you speak to one another? But I mean you to know I expected better of two creatures who were given minds: if not that you would actually care for each other at least that you would understand grief is distributed between you, among all your kind, for me to know you, as deep blue marks the wild scilla, white the wood violet. MATINS You want to know how I spend my time? I walk the front lawn, pretending to be weeding. You ought to know I'm never weeding, on my knees, pulling clumps of clover from the flower beds: in fact I'm looking for courage, for some evidence my life will change, though it takes forever, checking each clump for the symbolic leaf, and soon the summer is ending, already the leaves turning, always the sick trees going first, the dying turning brilliant yellow, while a few dark birds perform their curfew of music. You want to see my hands? As empty now as at the first note. Or was the point always to continue without a sign? EARLY DARKNESS How can you say earth should give me joy? Each thing born is my burden; I cannot succeed with all of you. And you would like to dictate to me, you would like to tell me who among you is most valuable, who most resembles me. And you hold up as an example the pure life, the detachment you struggle to acheive— How can you understand me when you cannot understand yourselves? Your memory is not powerful enough, it will not reach back far enough— Never forget you are my children. You are not suffering because you touched each other but because you were born, because you required life separate from me. VESPERS End of August. Heat like a tent over John's garden. And some things have the nerve to be getting started, clusters of tomatoes, stands of late lilies—optimism of the great stalks—imperial gold and silver: but why start anything so close to the end? Tomatoes that will never ripen, lilies winter will kill, that won't come back in spring. Or are you thinking I spend too much time looking ahead, like an old woman wearing sweaters in summer; are you saying I can flourish, having no hope of enduring? Blaze of the red cheek, glory of the open throat, white, spotted with crimson. THE GOLD LILY As I perceive I am dying now and know I will not speak again, will not survive the earth, be summoned out of it again, not a flower yet, a spine only, raw dirt catching my ribs, I call you, father and master: all around, my companions are failing, thinking you do not see. How can they know you see unless you save us? In the summer twilight, are you close enough to hear your child's terror? Or are you not my father, you who raised me? THE WHITE LILIES As a man and woman make a garden between them like a bed of stars, here they linger in the summer evening and the evening turns cold with their terror: it could all end, it is capable of devastation. All, all can be lost, through scented air the narrow columns uselessly rising, and beyond, a churning sea of poppies— Hush, beloved. It doesn't matter to me how many summers I live to return: this one summer we have entered eternity. I felt your two hands bury me to release its splendor.
Selections from Louise Glück's The Seven Ages
The Sensual World
I call to you across a monstrous river or chasm
to caution you, to prepare you.
Earth will seduce you, slowly, imperceptibly,
subtly, not to say with connivance.
I was not prepared: I stood in my granmother's kitchen,
holding out my glass. Stewed plums, stewed apricots—
the juice poured off into the glass of ice.
And the water added, patiently, in small increments,
the various cousins discrimminating, tasting
with each addition—
aroma of summer fruit, intensity of concentration:
the colored liquid turning gradually lighter, more radiant,
more light passing through it.
Delight, then solace. My grandmother waiting,
to see if more was wanted. Solace, then deep immersion.
I loved nothing more: deep privacy of the sensual life,
the self disappearing into it or inseparable from it,
somehow suspended, floating, its needs
fully exposed, awakened, fully alive—
Deep immersion, and with it
mysterious safety. Far away, the fruit glowing in its glass
bowls.
Outside the kitchen, the sun setting.
I was not prepared: sunset, end of summer. Demonstrations
of time as a continuum, as something coming to an end,
not a suspension; the senses wouldn't protect me.
I caution you as I was never cautioned:
you will never let go, you will never be satiated.
You will be damaged and scarred, you will continue to hunger.
Your body will age, you will continue to need.
You will want the earth, then more of the earth—
Sublime, indifferent, it is present, it will not respond.
It is encompassing, it will not minister.
Meaning, it will feed you, it will ravish you,
it will not keep you alive.
Study of My Sister
We respect, here in America,
Radium
When summer ended, my sister was going to school.
No more staying at home with the dogs,
waiting to catch up. No more
playing house with my mother. She was growing up,
she could join the carpool.
No one wanted to stay home. Real life
was the world: you discovered radium,
you danced the swan queen. Nothing
explained my mother. Nothing explained
putting aside radium because you realized finally
it was more interesting to make beds,
to have children like my sister and me.
My sister watched the trees; the leaves
couldn't turn fast enough. She kept asking
was it fall, was it cold enough?
But it was still summer. I lay in bed,
listening to my sister breathe.
I could see her blond hair in the moonlight;
under the white sheet, her little elf's body.
And on the bureau, I could see my new notebook.
It was like my brain: clean, empty. In six months
what was written there would be in my head also.
I watched my sister's face, one side buried in her stuffed
bear.
She was being stored in my head, as memory,
like facts in a book.
I didn't want to sleep. I never wanted to sleep
these days. Then I didn't want to wake up. I didn't want
the leaves turning, the nights turning dark early.
I didn't want to love my new clothes, my notebook.
I knew what they were: a bribe, a distraction.
Like the excitement of school: the truth was
time was moving in one direction, like a wave lifting
the whole house, the whole village.
I turned the light on, to wake my sister.
I wanted my parents awake and vigilant; I wanted them
to stop lying. But nobody woke. I sat up
reading my Greek myths in the nightlight.
The nights were cold, the leaves fell.
My sister was tired of school, she missed being home.
But it was too late to go back, too late to stop.
Summer was gone, the nights were dark. The dogs
wore sweaters to go outside.
And then fall was gone, the year was gone.
We were changing, we were growing up. But
it wasn't something you decided to do;
it was something that happened, something
you couldn't control.
Time was passing. Time was carrying us
faster and faster toward the door of the laboratory,
and then beyond the door into the abyss, the darkness.
My mother stirred the soup. The onions,
by a miracle, became part of the potatoes.
Birthday
Amazingly, I can look back
fifty years. And there, at the end of the gaze,
a human being already entirely recognizable,
the hands clutched in the lap, the eyes
staring into the future with the combined
terror and hopelessness of a soul expecting annihilation.
Entirely familiar, though still, of course, very young.
Staring blinding ahead, the expression of someone staring into utter darkness.
And thinking—which meant, I remember, the attempts of the mind
to prevent change.
Familiar, recognizable, but much more deeply alone, more despondent.
She does not, in her view, meet the definition
of child, a person with everything to look forward to.
This is how the others look; this is, therefore, what they are.
Constantly making friends
with the camera, many of them actually
smiling with real conviction—
I remember that age. Riddled with self-doubt, self-loathing,
and at the same time suffused
with contempt for the communal, the ordinary; forever
consigned to solitude, the bleak solace of perception, to a future
completely dominated by the tragic, with no use for the immense will
but to fend it off—
That is the problem of silence:
one cannot test one's ideas.
Because they are not ideas, they are the truth.
All the defences, the spiritual rigidity, the insistent
unmasking of the ordinary to reveal the tragic,
were actually innocence of the world.
Meaning the partial, the shifting, the mutable—
all that the absolute excludes. I sat in the dark, in the living room.
The birthday was over. I was thinking, naturally, about time.
I remember how, in almost the same instant,
my heart would leap up exultant and collapse
in desolate anguish. The leaping up—the half I didn't count—
that was happiness; that is what the word meant.