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Dawn
BY LOUISE GLÜCK
1
Child waking up in a dark room
screaming I want my duck back, I want my duck back
in a language nobody understands in the least —
There is no duck.
But the dog, all upholstered in white plush —
the dog is right there in the crib next to him.
Years and years — that’s how much time passes.
All in a dream. But the duck —
no one knows what happened to that.
2
They’ve just met, now
they’re sleeping near an open window.
Partly to wake them, to assure them
that what they remember of the night is correct,
now light needs to enter the room,
also to show them the context in which this occurred:
socks half hidden under a dirty mat,
quilt decorated with green leaves —
the sunlight specifying
these but not other objects,
setting boundaries, sure of itself, not arbitrary,
then lingering, describing
each thing in detail,
fastidious, like a composition in English,
even a little blood on the sheets —
3
Afterward, they separate for the day.
Even later, at a desk, in the market,
the manager not satisfied with the figures he’s given,
the berries moldy under the topmost layer —
so that one withdraws from the world
even as one continues to take action in it —
You get home, that’s when you notice the mold.
Too late, in other words.
As though the sun blinded you for a moment.
*******
Aboriginal Landscape
BY LOUISE GLÜCK
You’re stepping on your father, my mother said,
and indeed I was standing exactly in the center
of a bed of grass, mown so neatly it could have been
my father’s grave, although there was no stone saying so.
You’re stepping on your father, she repeated,
louder this time, which began to be strange to me,
since she was dead herself; even the doctor had admitted it.
I moved slightly to the side, to where
my father ended and my mother began.
The cemetery was silent. Wind blew through the trees;
I could hear, very faintly, sounds of weeping several rows away,
and beyond that, a dog wailing.
At length these sounds abated. It crossed my mind
I had no memory of being driven here,
to what now seemed a cemetery, though it could have been
a cemetery in my mind only; perhaps it was a park, or if not a park,
a garden or bower, perfumed, I now realized, with the scent of roses —
douceur de vivre filling the air, the sweetness of living,
as the saying goes. At some point,
it occurred to me I was alone.
Where had the others gone,
my cousins and sister, Caitlin and Abigail?
By now the light was fading. Where was the car
waiting to take us home?
I then began seeking for some alternative. I felt
an impatience growing in me, approaching, I would say, anxiety.
Finally, in the distance, I made out a small train,
stopped, it seemed, behind some foliage, the conductor
lingering against a doorframe, smoking a cigarette.
Do not forget me, I cried, running now
over many plots, many mothers and fathers —
Do not forget me, I cried, when at last I reached him.
Madam, he said, pointing to the tracks,
surely you realize this is the end, the tracks do not go further.
His words were harsh, and yet his eyes were kind;
this encouraged me to press my case harder.
But they go back, I said, and I remarked
their sturdiness, as though they had many such returns ahead of them.
You know, he said, our work is difficult: we confront
much sorrow and disappointment.
He gazed at me with increasing frankness.
I was like you once, he added, in love with turbulence.
Now I spoke as to an old friend:
What of you, I said, since he was free to leave,
have you no wish to go home,
to see the city again?
This is my home, he said.
The city — the city is where I disappear.
******************************
Cousins - Louise Glück
My son’s very graceful; he has perfect balance.
He’s not competitive, like my sister’s daughter.
Day and night, she’s always practicing.
Today, it’s hitting softballs into the copper beech,
retrieving them, hitting them again.
After a while, no one even watches her.
If she were any stronger, the tree would be bald.
My son won’t play with her; he won’t even ride bicycles with her.
She accepts that; she’s used to playing by herself.
The way she sees it, it isn’t personal:
whoever won’t play doesn’t like losing.
It’s not that my son’s inept, that he doesn’t do things well.
I’ve watched him race: he’s natural, effortless—
right from the first, he takes the lead.
And then he stops. It’s as though he was born rejecting
the solitude of the victor.
My sister’s daughter doesn’t have that problem.
She may as well be first; she’s already alone.
..................................
Because Glück writes so effectively about disappointment, rejection, loss, and isolation, reviewers frequently refer to her poetry as “bleak” or “dark.” The Nation’s Don Bogen felt that Glück’s “basic concerns” were “betrayal, mortality, love and the sense of loss that accompanies it… She is at heart the poet of a fallen world.” Stephen Burt, reviewing her collection Averno (2006), noted that “few poets save [Sylvia] Plath have sounded so alienated, so depressed, so often, and rendered that alienation aesthetically interesting.” Readers and reviewers have also marveled at Glück’s gift for creating poetry with a dreamlike quality that at the same time deals with the realities of passionate and emotional subjects. Holly Prado declared in a Los Angeles Times Book Review piece on The Triumph of Achilles (1985) that Glück’s poetry works “because she has an unmistakable voice that resonates and brings into our contemporary world the old notion that poetry and the visionary are intertwined.” Glück’s Pulitzer prize-winning collection, The Wild Iris (1992), clearly demonstrates her visionary poetics. The book, written in three segments, is set in a garden and imagines three voices: flowers speaking to the gardener-poet, the gardener-poet, and an omniscient god figure. In the New Republic, Helen Vendler described how “Glück’s language revived the possibilities of high assertion, assertion as from the Delphic tripod. The words of the assertions, though, were often humble, plain, usual; it was their hierarchic and unearthly tone that distinguished them. It was not a voice of social prophecy but of spiritual prophecy—a tone that not many women had the courage to claim....................................
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