Poems, 1962-2012

Living things don't all require light in the same degree. Some of us make our own light: a silver leaf like a path no one can use, a shallow lake of silver in the darkness under the great maples. But you know this already. You and the others who think you live for truth and, by extension, love all that is cold.

They sat far apart deliberately, to experience, daily, the sweetness of seeing each other across great distance.

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.

And if you missed a day, there was always the next, and if you missed a year, it didn't matter, the hills weren't going anywhere, the thyme and rosemary kept coming back, the sun kept rising, the bushes kept bearing fruit–

The soul is silent. If it speaks at all it speaks in dreams.

Dear friend, dear trembling partner, what surprises you most in what you feel, earth's radiance or your own delight? For me, always the delight is the surprise.

Aubade " There was one summer that returned many times over there was one flower unfurling taking many forms Crimson of the monarda, pale gold of the late roses There was one love There was one love, there were many nights Smell of the mock orange tree Corridors of jasmine and lilies Still the wind blew There were many winters but I closed my eyes The cold air white with dissolved wings There was one garden when the snow melted Azure and white; I couldn’t tell my solitude from love— There was one love; he had many voices There was one dawn; sometimes we watched it together I was here I was here There was one summer returning over and over there was one dawn I grew old watching

In my dream, I built a funeral pyre. For myself, you understand. I thought I had suffered enough. I thought this was the end of my body: fire seemed the right end for hunger; they were the same thing.

Because you were foolish enough to love one place, now you are homeless, an orphan in succession of shelters.

I could live almost completely in imagination.

My childhood, closed to me forever, turned gold like an autumn garden,

My soul shattered with the strain of trying to belong to earth-

But for my sister, that's the condition of love. She was my father's daughter: the face of love, to her, is the face turning away.

whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice…" -

Like a door the body opened and the soul looked out. Timidly at first, then less timidly until it was safe. Then in hunger it ventured. Then in brazen hunger, then at the invitation of any desire.

Living things don’t all require light in the same degree. Some of us make our own light —Louise Glück, from “Lamium,” Poems 1962-2012(Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st Edition, November 13, 2012)

Your back is my favorite part of you, the part furthest away from your mouth.

The night isn't dark; the world is dark. Stay with me a little longer.

When the dream ended the terror remained.

I don’t need your praise to survive. I was here first, before you were here, before you ever planted a garden.

There is no better. Only (for a short space) the night sky like a quarantine that sets you apart from your task.

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. The drugged Long Island summer sun drains Pattern from those empty sleeves, beyond my grandson Squealing in his pen. I have survived my life. The yellow daylight lines the oak leaf And the wire vines melt with the unchanged changes Of the baby. My children have their husbands’ hands. My husband’s framed, propped bald as a baby on their pianos, My tremendous man. I close my eyes. And all the clothes I have thrown out come back to me, the hollows Of my daughters’ slips…they drift; I see the sheer Summer cottons drift, equivalent to air.

The assignment was to fall in love. The details were up to you.

What do we have really? Sad tricks with ladders and shoes, tricks with salt, impurely motivated recurring attempts to build character.

Now the hero's dead. Like echoes, the women last longer; they're all too tough for their own good.