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

At the Conference on Women in the Academy

the noise to the locked doors the death room The librarian says she has to stop it’s time for him to close. He closes. Margaret, d. 1985 At the back of the church dressed like a bag lady, Margaret in dark torn clothes with her old woman smell with the red open wound on her forehead maggots in her wound . . . Third floor walkup on 112th she may have been there 85 years the steel door open to cat shit cat food human shit human food ghost dust ghost Margaret holding tight to her iron bed and to empty us of every illusion of separateness, on her forehead the maggots’ miner’s lamp . . . At the Conference on Women in the Academy The young scholar, her weeping finger the anger reality under the “social construction of reality” under the deaf blind TV filmed 264 door in the mountain broadcast auditorium: the woman talking in the split-open room under the room of what we say. The Orphanage Landing Goldenbridge, Dublin We her countrypeople are deep asleep we meet in the local and talk in our bread-and-butter sleep. All night the young girl waits on the orphanage landing as Sister told her till She comes down the stairs with a strap with scalding water In the morning the local doctor covers the wounds up over and over (“called to the orphanage 71 times in that year”) White wolves run in: No no this never happened. (White wolves in every second house are saying: This is not happening.) Reading the Mandelstams Snow falling the sixth night on the stone house full of silence Why can’t they drive you both now, tonight up to the house, light up the house Lines of ice in the night window notes the cradle of the real life 265 ...