Versione Italiana | Nota biografica | Versione lettura |
She doesn’t need much, the edge of a white lace skirt
Catching on a wooden floor; the glance
Lowering as it turns away, disappointed but wiser
Than you can imagine; the lightning of Amherst
With a wind like a bugle,
And suddenly she’s commanding the page,
Glowing secrets into my ear
Stroking my arm and making it write,
Or maybe lying through her delicate teeth
All the while trying to distract me
From the man I’m with whose dreams
She’s really trying to invade.
In the garden walk by the rest home
I take a wrong turn and come upon Nijinsky
leaning with both hands and his chin
on a stick, a thick branch still green.
He is sharing a secret with the branch
that must have broken off in the storm
the night before this lovely sunlit day.
I sit down next to him on the bench
knowing he will probably not respond
but wishing to share in his glory
and the sad silence of today.
“It must have been rough”
I say, “there on the stage
between earth and heaven
between man and woman
satyr and spirit.”
“And the sudden leap
beyond it all,” he mutters,
then more clearly,
“and the terrible drop
to the world where
distinctions matter.”
to Anne Sexton
Remember the lady in the red dress
with buttons all the way down
from the Chinese collar to the ankles
remember how the buttons opened
with each poem-one from the bottom
one from the top – slowly revealing
décolleté
and thighs.
This is the plot
of a woman poet
Even you, Prince, are sometimes blind,
living so deep in darkness as you do ?
sure that evil is easy as egotism,
that some one like me would savor
your sort of loneliness, relishing
those seductive days, nights in empty beds.
What can I say? Yours is such a masculine way -
and when we met that night at the crossroads
I walked a piece with you, watching the twisting
of your walking stick, wishing I could soothe
all the writhings in your world. I thought
to cradle you, like an agonized disciple,
in my bountiful lap - didn’t even hear
all the offers you made of wisdom
in exchange for my soul.
Even when you flashed the contract,
secure in my signature, I wasn’t paying
attention, bedeviled by that pain
in your eyes, that need for something good -
dare I call it - love?