Fortress

Pavane at Dusk

Pavane at Dusk The men have gone off so the women go out to the garden as if it were war but it isn't, it is cold summer, the fruit refusing, a fertile confusion rising in the warrior-heads of the onions, and such abundance in the shaggy herbs, in the lettuces, in the rich soil where the worm turns . . . it wants to be alone, without oppressive happiness. The music is the music of failed expectation. The child scampers around, oblivious, as the shadows are pulled from her body. She heaps brown petals on the cold bricks, and the women talk, steadily, smoothly: gratifying work, as if a carpenter were sanding a plank of wood, they work their sentences of understanding— but it is too late for this, the light is dying now, it is much too late to be understood . . . Their laps are full of fallen leaves, and light strikes the fortress with a muffled click . . . . The child hums, hammering brick, unsteadily— no, it's the little feudal angel hammering gold. 65 This page intentionally left blank ...