Garnet Poems: An Anthology of Connecticut Poetry Since 1776

Here and There

84 gArnet poems Here and There for Sylvia Shelly Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew It was the spirit that we sought and knew That we should ask this often as she sang. —Wallace Stevens, “The Idea of Order at Key West” i Here in the north, a cold gray morning does not deter the still-mating birds: two orioles, a wood thrush? I’m not good at this quick argot, so particular but sounding all alike to a foreigner. There’s no heat in the house of course in May unless I light a fire. Stevens I think would have lighted one today and, comfortable with my betters, I do too. ii There in Key West, the singer lies asleep, perhaps under a fan, after playing late at the café. They kept her playing and singing by the edge of the warm gulf (after she’d watched the sun drop into it, staying to cup Hesperus in her small hands against the wind that rises suddenly then, until his flame caught)—they wouldn’t let her stop at one o’clock. Now the current runs past the island very fast as if in panic. But the trees flower calmly in the heat outside her house. 85 WilliAm mereDith iii Now there are whole mindfuls of climate in Connecticut and Florida, ideas of moisture and drought, cold and hot— living and dead, for that matter. Think of how many ideas are dancing in pairs. The idea of Wallace Stevens dancing alone is picked up and held in mind briefly, here and there, like a birdcall. What is the difference between ourselves and ghosts? Only that we move awkwardly through the air. iv While my cold birds chirrup—I dare not say mindlessly— in Connecticut, and the crackling on the hearth begins to warm me, I hear as well the tart music of last night in the piano bar glassed in from the green-lighted water off Key West, the laughter struck with certain resonances that is Sylvia’s particular call, though I think she is still asleep, perhaps with a ceiling fan turning slowly above her bed, between two ideas, a gulf and an ocean. ...