The 5766th New Year in Vermont
Rent from DeepDyve- The 5766th New Year in Vermont
I
The trees grow arms with paper handsthat dry and falland grow again,aspen, ash, alderand American beech.Before they die,they offer shade and ornamental berries.They haven't any children at home,only handschanging colors,inconsistent, breathtaking,unaware of their effect.
Like children's drawingstaped to grade school windows,triangle roofs totter on boxes of houses,no more and no less innocentthan the wood stacked outside for winter, [End Page 105] the silent, homebound ambulancecan't hold them responsible,seasons can't tell your fortune,nature's no mirror.
II
A necklace of crab legsdrapes a green treebecause hunters in the skykill the bear constellationeach autumn,dripping blood onto the earth.And roasted bear meatstains other leaves yellow.
A violent, carnivorous mythin rural Johnson on Sunday.
Indoors, I looked past the lecturing poet,the window behind himframing the one in the yellow house next door,a red flower bloomingin a pot on the sill.
He offers pairs of poems.I want to understandthe concision of windows and trees.They do not saythat in my landscape you will findone mushroom discovered by one lone hiker,one cold stream with one bold swimmerwho arrived on a unicycle,one patch on one eye. [End Page 106]
III
The leaves are falling faster now,random pigment squeezed among the branches.Green was good for a startnow orange strokes my spinepurple cups a breastredthrustsin thousands of variationsfrom dark to pale. At duskthe coral reef on the horizon connects to earthand one wants to keep moving in this placeif only for the pleasant rasping sound,but gardeners rake the lawnsand bag the leavesand snow is coming.
IV
The way we want to crythe Vermont sky wants to rainmad with restraintholding off until the cloudsno longer contain it.
The way we thirst for lovethe Vermont sky drinks the rainin uncertain candle light,flowers on fire,unnecessary flamesin this red-leafed world.
The way we want to diethe Vermont road endsin a cemetery, [End Page 107] the yellowed stonesfor Lilah, wife of X,and Solomon, aged fifty-six,horizontal now,as flat as the earth.
Too many houses for sale,roofs sagging.
No loverreturning?
V
Cancer is holyexacting sacrificeof whole or part.It shortens lifeand sanctifies remaining years.Now I must do what I must.
Divorce is holyexacting separation.Splitting fake whole into true part,it sanctifies the fragment.Now I must be who I am.
Solitude is holybringing the soul closer to itselfthan it can bear, making you payfor inattentiveness,and opening your eyes.These trees aresugar, rock and bird's eye maple.Now I am one. [End Page 108]
Lisa Katz was born in New York and has lived in Jerusalem since 1983. Reconstruction, a volume of her poetry in Hebrew translation, is forthcoming from Am Oved in Israel. Look There: The Selected Poems of Agi Mishol in her translation was published in January 2006 as a Lannan Foundation translation selection of Graywolf Press. She teaches literary translation and creative writing at Hebrew University.
