Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003

Mother and Child, Body and Soul

and put us out, too poor to stay alive. —And now the farmer too with his large white head backwards or forwards by a belt is led down the black hall hungerless to bed and soon will the reader too my listening head be laid to bed, the tunnel fall . . . * Mother and Child, Body and Soul Child You’ve boarded me over like a window or a well. Mother It was autumn I couldn’t hear the students only the music coming in the window, Se tu m’ami If you love me I went for a week’s journey in soft ermine. Darling, the ovals of your hair . . . growing darkness, growing light 237 autumn leaves, your hair the hue of rain-drenched bark, your voice: Don’t ever leave me . . . And this child, this window in my side, boarded over all my life, —how can I take the boards off, in this wind? I will break if I bend . . . Soul I—as daughter—am black: I—mother—shun her, keep her out of everything. The daughter says, I’m anorexic, don’t think I don’t like the meat. She says, I don’t want to be an animal. Animals eat other animals. She is my soul saying You will never know me. Beginning to talk. Soul (2) Lying in a bunk on a train almost crushed by the woman above 238 door in the mountain ...