Map (11 page)

For others, Death was mad and monumental—

not for these citizens of a sepia past.

Their griefs turned into smiles, their days flew fast,

their vanishing was due to influenza.

 

 

The little girl I was—

I know her, of course.

I have a few snapshots

from her brief life.

I feel good-natured pity

for a couple of little poems.

I remember a few events.

 

But

to make the man who's with me

laugh and hug me,

I dig up just one silly story:

the puppy love

of that ugly duckling.

 

I tell him

how she fell in love with a college boy;

that is, she wanted him

to look at her.

 

I tell him

how she once ran out to meet him

with a bandage on her unhurt head,

so that he'd ask, oh just ask her

what had happened.

 

Funny little thing

How could she know

that even despair can work for you

if you're lucky enough

to outlive it.

 

I'd give her some change: go buy a cookie.

I'd give her more: go see a show.

Go away, I'm busy now.

 

Can't you see

the lights are out?

Don't you get it,

the door is locked?

Stop fiddling with the knob—

the man who laughed

and hugged me

is not your college boy.

 

It'd be better if you

went back where you came from.

I don't owe you anything,

I'm just an ordinary woman

who only knows

when to betray

another's secret.

 

Don't keep staring at us

with those eyes of yours,

open too wide

like the eyes of the dead.

 

 

My nonarrival in the city of N.

took place on the dot.

 

You'd been alerted

in my unmailed letter.

 

You were able not to be there

at the agreed-upon time.

 

The train pulled up at Platform 3.

A lot of people got out.

 

My absence joined the throng

as it made its way toward the exit.

 

Several women rushed

to take my place

in all that rush.

 

Somebody ran up to one of them.

I didn't know him,

but she recognized him

immediately.

 

While they kissed

with not our lips,

a suitcase disappeared,

not mine.

 

The railroad station in the city of N.

passed its exam

in objective existence

with flying colors.

 

The whole remained in place.

Particulars scurried

along the designated tracks.

 

Even a rendezvous

took place as planned.

 

Beyond the reach

of our presence.

 

In the paradise lost

of probability.

 

Somewhere else.

Somewhere else.

How these little words ring.

 

 

These days we just hold him.

Hold him living.

Only the heart

still pounces on him.

 

To the dismay

of our distaff cousin, the spider,

he will not be devoured.

 

We permit his head,

pardoned centuries ago,

to rest upon our shoulder.

 

For a thousand tangled reasons

it's become our practice

to listen to him breathe.

 

Hissed from our mysteries.

Broken of our bloody ways.

Stripped of female menace.

 

Only the fingernails

still glitter, scratch, and retract.

Do they know,

can they guess

that they're the last set of silverware

from the family fortune?

 

He's already forgotten

he should flee us.

He doesn't know the wide-eyed fear

that grabs you by the short hairs.

 

He looks as if

he'd just been born.

All out of us.

All ours.

 

On his cheek,

an eyelash's imploring shadow.

Between his shoulder blades,

a touching trickle of sweat.

 

That's what he is now,

and that's how he'll nod off.

Truthful.

Hugged by a death

whose permit has elapsed.

 

 

So this is his mother.

This small woman.

The gray-eyed procreator.

 

The boat in which, years ago,

he sailed to shore.

 

The boat from which he stepped

into the world,

into un-eternity.

 

Genetrix of the man

with whom I leap through fire.

 

So this is she, the only one

who didn't take him

finished and complete.

 

She herself pulled him

into the skin I know,

bound him to the bones

that are hidden from me.

 

She herself raised

the gray eyes

that he raised to me.

 

So this is she, his Alpha.

Why has he shown her to me.

 

Born.

So he was born, too.

Born like everyone else.

Like me, who will die.

 

The son of an actual woman.

A new arrival from the body's depths.

A voyager to Omega.

 

Subject to

his own absence,

on every front,

at any moment.

 

He hits his head

against a wall

that won't give way forever.

 

His movements

dodge and parry

the universal verdict.

 

I realized

that his journey was already halfway over.

 

But he didn't tell me that,

no.

 

“This is my mother”

was all he said.

 

 

On the hill where Troy once stood,

they've dug up seven cities.

Seven cities. Six too many

for a single epic.

What's to be done with them? What?

Hexameters burst,

nonfictional bricks appear between the cracks,

ruined walls rise mutely as in silent films,

charred beams, broken chains,

bottomless pitchers drained dry,

fertility charms, olive pits,

and skulls as palpable as tomorrow's moon.

 

Our stockpile of antiquity grows constantly,

it's overflowing,

reckless squatters jostle for a place in history,

hordes of sword fodder,

Hector's nameless extras, no less brave than he,

thousands upon thousands of singular faces,

each the first and last for all time,

in each a pair of inimitable eyes.

How easy it was to live not knowing this,

so sentimental, so spacious.

 

What should we give them? What do they need?

Some more or less unpeopled century?

Some small appreciation for their goldsmiths' art?

We three billion judges

have problems of our own,

our own inarticulate rabble,

railroad stations, bleachers, protests and processions,

vast numbers of remote streets, floors, and walls.

We pass each other once for all time in department stores

shopping for a new pitcher.

Homer is working in the census bureau.

No one knows what he does in his spare time.

 

 

Here I am, Cassandra.

And this is my city under ashes.

And these are my prophet's staff and ribbons.

And this is my head full of doubts.

 

It's true, I am triumphant.

My prophetic words burn like fire in the sky.

Only unacknowledged prophets

are privy to such prospects.

Only those who got off on the wrong foot,

whose predictions turned to fact so quickly—

it's as if they'd never lived.

 

I remember it so clearly—

how people, seeing me, would break off in midword.

Laughter died.

Lovers' hands unclasped.

Children ran to their mothers.

I didn't even know their short-lived names.