Lisel Mueller
For A Thirteenth Birthday
You have read War and Peace. Now here is Sister Carrie, Not up to Tolstoy; still It will second the real world: Predictable planes and levels, Pavement that holds you, Stairs that lift you,
Blood Oranges
In 1936, a child In Hitler’s Germany, What did I know about the war in Spain? Andalusia was a tango On a wind-up gramophone, Franco a hero’s face in the paper. No one told
Curriculum Vitae
1992 1) I was born in a Free City, near the North Sea. 2) In the year of my birth, money was shredded into Confetti. A loaf of bread cost a million marks. Of
What The Dog Perhaps Hears
If an inaudible whistle Blown between our lips Can send him home to us, Then silence is perhaps The sound of spiders breathing And roots mining the earth; It may be asparagus heaving, Headfirst,
A Day Like Any Other
Such insignificance: a glance At your record on the doctor’s desk Or a letter not meant for you. How could you have known? It’s not true That your life passes before you In rapid
Night Song
Among rocks, I am the loose one, Among aarows, I am the heart, Among daughters, I am the recluse, Among sons, the one who dies young. Among answers, I am the question, Between lovers,
Five For Country Music
I. Insomnia The bulb at the front door burns and burns. If it were a white rose it would tire of blooming Through another endless night. The moon knows the routine; It beats the
Immortality
In Sleeping Beauty’s castle The clock strikes one hundred years And the girl in the tower returns to the world. So do the servants in the kitchen, Who don’t even rub their eyes. The
Things
What happened is, we grew lonely Living among the things, So we gave the clock a face, The chair a back, The table four stout legs Which will never suffer fatigue. We fitted our
Why We Tell Stories
For Linda Foster I Because we used to have leaves And on damp days Our muscles feel a tug, Painful now, from when roots Pulled us into the ground And because our children believe
Moon Fishing
When the moon was full they came to the water. Some with pitchforks, some with rakes, Some with sieves and ladles, And one with a silver cup. And they fished til a traveler passed
Bedtime Story
The moon lies on the river Like a drop of oil. The children come to the banks to be healed Of their wounds and bruises. The fathers who gave them their wounds and bruises
Reading The Brothers Grimm To Jenny
Jenny, your mind commands Kingdoms of black and white: You shoulder the crow on your left, The snowbird on your right; For you the cinders part And let the lentils through, And noise falls
All Night
All night the knot in the shoelace Waits for its liberation, And the match on the table packs its head With anticipation of light. The faucet sweats out a bead of water, Which gathers
The Laughter Of Women
The laughter of women sets fire To the Halls of Injustice And the false evidence burns To a beautiful white lightness It rattles the Chambers of Congress And forces the windows wide open So
Another Version
Our trees are aspens, but people Mistake them for birches; They think of us as characters In a Russian novel, Kitty and Levin Living contentedly in the country. Our friends from the city watch
Alive Together
Speaking of marvels, I am alive Together with you, when I might have been Alive with anyone under the sun, When I might have been Abelard’s woman Or the whore of a Renaissance pop
The Concert
In memory of Dimitri Mitropoulos The harpist believes there is music In the skeletons of fish The French horn player believes In enormous golden snails The piano believes in nothing And grins from ear
Monet Refuses The Operation
Doctor, you say there are no haloes Around the streetlights in Paris And what I see is an aberration Caused by old age, an affliction. I tell you it has taken me all my
Small Poem About The Hounds And The Hares
After the kill, there is the feast. And toward the end, when the dancing subsides And the young have sneaked off somewhere, The hounds, drunk on the blood of the hares, Begin to talk
Scenic Route
For Lucy, who called them “ghost houses.” Someone was always leaving And never coming back. The wooden houses wait like old wives Along this road; they are everywhere, Abandoned, leaning, turning gray. Someone always