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k r isz t i na tó t h | 223 k r i s z t i n a t ó t h (19 6 7 –) Star-meadow I. The tearful woman in a negligee comes out to you, barefoot, stands there alone; It makes no sense to stay awake this way, go back to sleep, you say, from today on it will be different; the crickets cry; you’re on the bench, she has been sleeping with you twenty years, she whispers, this July; the summer is too hot, there’s a moon-shadow, and I sleep in my dreams’ chaotic voices and listen, blanketless, to hear whatever final word the tearful woman chooses while pulling the mosquito-net together. A guelder-rose, a guelder-rose! you say —and you reach down, to turn it to the air, but now in fragile flakes it breaks away: the grass is full of fatal petals there. II. Everything’s linked with secret vein and tendril, the morning glory runs, cranes to look out, listens into silence with its blue funnel, how many more years, then, have you still got? The handsome bulrush leans against the fence, a lanky fellow with a cigarette; it’s growing cold, the stars burn on, intense, the dew-touched grass is starting to get wet; the bear-paw, though, as if somehow aware, has thrown off all its leathern leaves; in heaven the Great Bear isn’t going anywhere; sleep now, for every promise is forgiven— 224 | Light within the Shade . . . it’s hard to catch the moment of the morning, the lightening, but still the moonlight falls: your body throws two shadows in that dawning, and each one reaches after different calls. III. How still it’s got, the crickets now are dumb: the scent of the gardenias floats out wide. The hour when one lies awake has come, and gone, you’ll need to get up, go inside; you’ll stop there at the terrace, pinching out the dried seed-heads, and look the garden over: the grass looks threadbare, and you are in doubt where to begin, you see that you could never tear out the moss, the garden path is full of it; the sunny parts are overrun with starwort, by midsummer it will all be naked, burned, and shriveled by the sun. Don’t bother, just lie back, you tell him; he, mightily yawning, says you’re blithering, this patch is flourishing, why, don’t you see that the star-meadow covers everything?! 1997–2001 ...

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