| Four Poems by Jacqueline Marcus | ||
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Privileged Winter
trees, brooding, self-absorbed.
The slow bright spot lost in the yellow leaves, and
the birds that rush from the rooftops. I dreamed of the sea in early summer before
the tourists made their deadly rounds. The composition of the day, ruined. Tables,
chairs, newspapers folded neatly.
I envy
their measured lives— the bicycle, propped against the trellised wall, the
café, and its happy jingle of silverware. I’m talking about the wine taken for granted when
bombs shatter your neighbor’s house, and all you want is a glass, a candle— anything that vaguely resembles the habits that keep you grounded when
there is nothing left for you to do except wait, and smoke, crouched
in the corner of the hallway, until the clarity of light lifts its ugly mask: How noble art thou… This
morning, I woke up thinking of Chekhov, pouring
his afternoon tea, the cherry orchards, shimmering
in the wet sun. Perhaps it explains that dolorous note, right at the end, that sad
string, plucked, like so many leaves, falling, and that
even the first blow of the axe— cannot reach the wound that
heals us. Small Tree
after the photographer, Albert Renger-Patzsch Perhaps it's the absence of color
that draws him near to this tree. The first rains have not yet come. And yet Not a breath of wind, no birds or
perpetual smoke Perhaps he imagines the sky as a
frame of silence? Is it not like a small boat,
After all, the night could only
afford a little rain through folds of light, and who could argue with the
sleep-walkers, climbing back into their cars, like clock-work? Or Blake, for that matter, who painted Newton under the ocean.
*** All morning I watched the
long-billed Dowitcher pull across the lake, the flat surface, with its glass of
dualism, played the sun like music from a different age. It still captivates us— Giotto's blue sky and leafless tree, distinct from the burning- away-angels. Less clear than a memory, anyway, of
failure and sickness of heart. The way lovers will imitate the lost
summer of darkness,
the slow rise out of the self, unhealed— for the time being,
(fog lamp in the pepper trees, and all the corners of the fresco.) But it's hard, sometimes, to settle
for anything less. *** It's hard to remember not to take it all for granted. So I look, for the rest of the
morning, with my binoculars focused on the
purple finch,
the poppies on fire. The gulls begin their ballet in
grand strokes
Now all at
once, they have risen together, floating
slowly upward, closer than I imagined to Dante's
angels,
closer than I imagined
From The Other Side of the Night
Maybe it's true
that the nights are merely a temporary shift of color? I can't say what
was going through her mind, my mother at the
window, washing the same dish for 15 minutes, mesmerized by the
snow's hush in the red pines, as if the body were
left momentarily
to its mechanical strings and the soul rose
out of its frame like a cool rain in the open light, a flurry of geese
tipped like a thousand candles—
until something
snaps,
like a parachute, and all the squares of acreage grow larger and out
of focus, the sad narration
of forks, spoons and left-over words, propped up and
waiting on the table,
like a Chekhov
play. ____________ Some of us simply
tip our hats to the door, like P.B. Shelley
in his storm-lit boat, like Socrates, raising his cup of
hemlock, much like that
character in Bukowski's Barfly, toasting
cheerfully,
To all my frien-n-n-n-n-nds! with one last swig
and then he buried the axe for good.
Did he actually
believe he was going from here to the Intelligible? And why did he hope
to meet with Agamemnon? Did the hemlock
rush to his brain— or just to his heart? In any event, he
died, feeling a whole lot better without us, leaving his body to
the women to wash, and the sun, crossing the
Acropolis,
Apollo, in a dome of trees. ____________ Time forgives no
one, not even Agamemnon's cruel thrust, forcing himself
into the frightened slave girl, Achilles' loss. ____________ In the distant
field,
a chorus of silence, in the distant
rock,
a chorus of ruin, in the distant
trees,
a chorus of slumber, in the distant
wind,
a chorus sings of ghosts. ____________ Some nights,
when it's clear you've left forever, when everything
slows down long enough to feel its grief, burning like the
morning's river,
I let the dark fall
upon the sweet grass, inch by inch, I let it fall and
fall until the rain gives up, until the night
proves otherwise. It's like a tide
that takes you in, always out and farther away than the playful
yelps of the seagulls. Whatever you see is
lost to a bit of sky, a field of ambiguity, the window that
faces north, the
perhaps of some distant moment… cold as November's
stars.
Jacqueline Marcus' debut collection of poems, Close to the Shore, was published by Michigan State University Press (December 2002). Jacqueline Marcus' poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Antioch Review, The Journal, The Ohio Review, The Literary Review, The Wallace Stevens Journal, Poetry International and elsewhere. She teaches philosophy at Cuesta College and is the editor of ForPoetry.com. Click here for a complete biography on Jacqueline Marcus' publications and academic degrees. "Privileged" first appeared in Faultline, "Small Tree" and "The Other Side of the Night" first appeared in The Cider Press Review, and "Remembering Giotto" first appeared in Mid-American Review. Click here to read more poems from Close to the Shore.
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