Marilyn Hacker

Desesperanto

After Joseph Roth Parce que c’était lui; parce que c’était moi. Montaigne, De L’amitië The dream’s forfeit was a night in jail And now the slant light is crepuscular. Papers or not, you are

Exiles

Her brown falcon perches above the sink As steaming water forks over my hands. Below the wrists they shrivel and turn pink. I am in exile in my own land. Her half-grown cats scuffle

Year's End

for Audre Lorde and Sonny Wainwright Twice in my quickly disappearing forties Someone called while someone I loved and I were Making love to tell me another woman had died of cancer. Seven years

For K. J., Leaving and Coming Back

August First: it was a year ago We drove down from St.-Guilhem-le-Désert To open the house in St. Guiraud Rented unseen. I’d stay; you’d go; that’s where Our paths diverged. I’d settle down to

Rune of the Finland Woman

For Sára Karig “You are so wise,” the reindeer said, “you can bind the winds of the world in a single strand.”-H. C. Andersen, “The Snow Queen” She could bind the world’s winds in

Scars on Paper

An unwrapped icon, too potent to touch, She freed my breasts from the camp Empire dress. Now one of them’s the shadow of a breast With a lost object’s half-life, with as much Life

The Boy

It is the boy in me who’s looking out The window, while someone across the street Mends a pillowcase, clouds shift, the gutter spout Pours rain, someone else lights a cigarette? (Because he flinched,

Morning News

Spring wafts up the smell of bus exhaust, of bread And fried potatoes, tips green on the branches, Repeats old news: arrogance, ignorance, war. A cinder-block wall shared by two houses Is new rubble.

Cherry-ripe: dark sweet burlats, scarlet reverchons Firm-fleshed and tart in the mouth Bigarreaux, peach-and-white napoléons As the harvest moves north From Provence to the banks of the Yonne (they grow napoléons in Washington State

Nearly A Valediction

You happened to me. I was happened to Like an abandoned building by a bull- Dozer, like the van that missed my skull Happened a two-inch gash across my chin. You were as deep

Invocation

This is for Elsa, also known as Liz, An ample-bosomed gospel singer: five Discrete malignancies in one full breast. This is for auburn Jacqueline, who is Celebrating fifty years alive, One since she finished

Iva's Pantoum

We pace each other for a long time. I packed my anger with the beef jerky. You are the baby on the mountain. I am In a cold stream where I led you. I