In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Could get to save my soul: those things that, once Established, cannot be changed by angels, Devils, lightning, ice or indifference: Identities! Identities! Angina That one who is the dreamer lies mostly in her left arm, Where the pain shows first, Tuned in on the inmost heart, Never escaping. On the blue, bodied mound ofchenille, That limb lies still. Death in the heart must be calm, Must not look suddenly, but catch the windowframed squirrel In a mild blue corner Ofan eye staring straight at the ceiling And hold him there. Cornered also, the oak tree moves All the ruffled green way toward itself Around the squirrel thinking ofthe sun As small boys and girls tiptoe in Overawed by their own existence, For courtly doctors long dead Have told her that to bear children Was to die, and they are the healthy issue Offour ofthose. Oh, beside that room the oak leaves Burn out their green in an instant, renew it all From the roots when the wind stops. All afternoon she dreams ofletters To disc jockeys, requesting the "old songs," The songs ofthe nineties, when she married, and caught With her first child rheumatic fever. Existence is family: sometime, Inadequate ghosts round the bed, But mostly voices, low voices ofserious drunkards Coming in with the night light on And the pink radio turned down; Buckdancer's Choice / 228 She hears them ruin themselves On the rain-weeping wires, the bearing-everything poles, Then dozes, not knowing sleeping from dyingIt is day. Limbs stiffen when the heart beats Wrongly. Her left arm tingles, The squirrel's eye blazes up, the telephone rings, Her children and her children's children fail In school, marriage, abstinence, business. But when I think oflove With the best ofmyself-that odd powerI think ofriding, by chairlift, Up a staircase burning with dust In the afternoon sun slanted also Like stairs without steps To a room where an old woman lies Who can stand on her own two feet Only six strange hours every month: Where such a still one lies smiling And takes her appalling risks In absolute calm, helped only by the most Helplessly bad music in the world, where death, A chastened, respectful presence Forced by years ofexcessive quiet To be stiller than wallpaper roses, Waits, twined in the roses, saying slowly To itself, as sprier and sprier Generations ofdisc jockeys chatter, I must be still and not worry, Not worry, not worry, to hold My peace, my poor place, my own. Dust Lying at home Anywhere it can change not only the color But the shape ofthe finger that runs along it leaving a trail That disappears from the earth; nothing can follow Dust / 229 ...

Share