Marble     Hermione     The Light on the Door     Jade     What We Give  
   
The Ghosts of Who We Were     The Last Thing           (Back to TOP)   

 


Marble



 

 


Slung in the tide's large water arcs, my thoughts,
Turning back, sweep into the dark
Shale of the cove. Jagg'd. Loved.
Shot with ordinary quartz.

Shale. The color of New England coastal fog.
It looks like wet silk, feels quiet this time of year.
I think of marble, loved as well, cloudy as autumn sky,
And cloudlike also, though Leontes asked

What chisel could cut breath.

Like folds of bright wool, like transparent gauze,
Like wind lifted linen, like the fingers of Kwan Yin,
Like Hermes shoulders, like the hands of Jesus,
Like water, air, earth or fire. Like anything. And lustrous.

But Galatea's a myth, and Yeats' hungry lovers,
Kissing statues at midnight in some public place,
Kissed character into masks and went to bed.
Only Hermione lived, who never was marble.

Chide me dear stone. You cannot.

Oh, I want something living, accidental., unearned,
A casual happiness, uncalculated, free.
I have grown sick of intelligence and measurement,
Of my own failings, sick of forbearance.

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

I want not to deserve what I have but only have it,
Life, the windfall, the flaking shale no sculptor needs.
I want my own lips kissed, my tears in plain pity
Rubbed from my face by hard fingers out of doors.

In such air, dim and brilliant, sun slow burning through clouds,
Lustrous, like marble. But not marble.
Marble is tragic substance. It is heavy.
Kissed, it does not live. It has no unresponsible impulse.

I am clumsy. I fail. I age. I am ashamed.
This is my only life. I waste in marble.