From Room to Room

by Jane Kenyon

  to make you stop telling me things.

  I was a fist closed around a rock.

  For a long time nothing changed.

  It was like driving all day through Texas.

  But now I’ve stopped

  tearing the arm off the waiting-room chair,​

  and sneaking back at night to fix it.

  And the change was like light​

  moving through a prism, red​

  turning to yellow, green to blue,​

  and all by insensible degrees.

  From the Back Steps

  A bird begins to sing,​

  hesitates, like a carpenter​

  pausing to straighten a nail, then​

  begins again.

  The cat lolls in the shade​

  under the parked car, his head​

  in the wheel’s path.

  I bury the thing I love.

  But the cat continues to lie​

  comfortably, right where he is,​

  and no one will move the car.

  My own violence falls away​

  like paint peeling from a wall.

  I am choosing a new color​

  to paint my house, though I’m still​

  not sure what the color will be.

  Cages

  1

  Driving to Winter Park in March,​

  past Cypress Gardens and the baseball camps,​

  past the dead beagle in the road, his legs​

  outstretched, as if he meant to walk​

  on his side in the next life.

  At night, the air

  smells like a cup of jasmine tea.

  The night-bloomer, white​

  flowering jasmine,​

  and groves of orange trees​

  breathing through their sweet skins.

  And cattle in the back

  of the truck, staggering

  as the driver turns off the highway.

  2

  By the pool, here at the hotel,

  animals in cages to amuse us:

  monkeys, peacocks, a pair of black swans,

  rabbits, parrots, cockatoos,

  flamingoes holding themselves on one leg,

  perfectly still, as if they loathed

  touching the ground.

  The black swan floats

  in three inches of foul water,

  its bright bill thrust under its wing.

  And the monkeys: one of them​

  reaches through the cage​

  and grabs for my pen, as if​

  he had finally decided to write a letter​

  long overdue.

  And one lies in the lap of another.

  They look like Mary and Jesus​

  in the Pieta, one searching for fleas​

  or lice on the other, for succour​

  on the body of the other—​

  some particle of comfort, some​

  consolation for being in this life.

  3

  And the body, what about the body?​

  Sometimes it is my favorite child,​

  uncivilized as those spider monkeys​

  loose in the trees overhead.

  They leap, and cling with their strong

  tails, they steal food

  from the cages—little bandits.

  If Chaucer could see them,

  he would change “lecherous as a sparrow”

  to “lecherous as a monkey.”

  And sometimes my body disgusts me.​

  Filling and emptying it disgusts me.

  And when I feel that way

  I treat it like a goose with its legs​

  tied together, stuffing it​

  until the liver is fat enough​

  to make a tin of pate.

  Then I have to agree that the body​

  is a cloud before the soul’s eye.

  This long struggle to be at home​

  in the body, this difficult friendship.

  4

  People come here when they are old​

  for slow walks on the beach​

  with new companions. Mortuaries​

  advertise on bus-stop benches.

  At night in nearby groves,

  unfamiliar constellations

  rise in a leafy sky,

  and in the parks, mass plantings

  of cannas are blooming

  their outrageous blooms,

  as if speaking final thoughts,

  no longer caring what anyone thinks . . .

  4

  Afternonn at the House

  At the Feeder

  First the Chickadees take​

  their share, then fly​

  to the bittersweet vine,​

  where they crack open the seeds,​

  excited, like poets​

  opening the day’s mail.

  And the Evening Grosbeaks—​

  those large and prosperous​

  finches—resemble skiers​

  with the latest equipment, bright​

  yellow goggles on their faces.

  Now the Bluejay comes in

  for a landing, like a SAC bomber

  returning to Plattsburgh

  after a day of patrolling the ozone.

  Every teacup in the pantry rattles.

  The solid and graceful bodies​

  of Nuthatches, perpetually​

  upside down, like Yogis .. .​

  and Slate-Colored Juncoes, feeding​

  on the ground, taking only​

  what falls to them.

  The cats watch, one​

  from the lid of the breadbox,​

  another from the piano. A third​

  flexes its claws in sleep, dreaming

  perhaps, of a chicken neck,​

  or of being worshiped as a god​

  at Bubastis, during​

  the XXIII dynasty.

  The Circle on the Grass

  1

  Last night the wind came into the yard,​

  and wrenched the biggest branch​

  from the box elder, and threw it down​

  —no, that was not what it wanted—​

  and kept on going.

  This morning a man arrives​

  with ladders, ropes and saws,​

  to cut down what is left.

  2

  Eighty years ago, someone

  planted the sapling

  midway between porch and fence,

  and later that day,

  looked down from the bedroom

  on the highest branch.

  The woman who stood at the window​

  could only imagine shade,​

  and the sound of leaves moving overhead,​

  like so many whispered conversations.

  3

  I keep busy in the house,​

  but I hear the high drone​

  of the saw, and the drop in pitch​

  as chain cuts into bark.

  I clean with the vacuum​

  so I won’t have to listen.

  Finally the man goes for lunch,

  leaving the house quiet

  as a face paralyzed by strokes.

  4

  All afternoon I hear the blunt​

  shudder of limbs striking the ground.

  The tree drops its arms

  like someone abandoning a conviction:

  —perhaps I have been wrong all this time—.

  When it’s over, there is nothing left​

  but a pale circle on the grass,​

  dark in the center, like an eye.

  Falling

  March. Rain. Five days now.

  Water gathers in flat places,​

  finds every space between stones.​

  The river peaks, fish lie​

  stunned on the muddy bottom.

  After the crash in the Swiss​

  countryside, an arm​

  dangles from a tree. A
tortoiseshell​

  comb parts the grass.

  The bookmark is still in place.

  This month I was five days late,​

  but now the blood comes in a rush.​

  Let everything fall where it will.​

  Someone unpacks a suitcase, thinks​

  of living without possessions.

  Afternoon in the House

  It’s quiet here. The cats​

  sprawl, each​

  in a favored place.

  The geranium leans this way​

  to see if I’m writing about her:​

  head all petals, brown​

  stalks, and those green fans.

  So you see,

  I am writing about you.

  I turn on the radio. Wrong.

  Let’s not have any noise

  in this room, except

  the sound of a voice reading a poem.

  The cats request

  The Meadow Mouse, by Theodore Roethke.

  The house settles down on its haunches​

  for a doze.

  I know you are with me, plants,​

  and cats—and even so, I’m frightened,​

  sitting in the middle of perfect​

  possibility.

  Full Moon in Winter

  Bare branches rise​

  and fall overhead.

  The barn door bangs loose,​

  persistent as remorse​

  after anger and shouting.

  Dogs bark across the pond.​

  The shadow of the house​

  appears on the crusted snow​

  like the idea of a house,​

  and my own shadow

  lies down in the cold​

  at my feet, lunatic,​

  like someone tired​

  of living in a body,​

  needy and full of desire . . .

  After an Early Frost

  The cat takes her squealing mouse into the bathtub to play. Monopoly? Twenty Questions? I hear bottles and brushes hitting the floor.​

  Then nothing.

  I go to take out the dead mouse.

  Not in the tub. Nowhere on the floor. Suddenly the towel moves on the rack. The mouse crouches there, shaking, eyes wide, sides heaving, nose like a peppercorn.

  I consider bringing the cat back to finish the job. I consider finishing the job myself.

  Instead, I nudge it into a coffee can. I put the can under a bush in the garden and go off to write letters.

  Maybe it will be back in the shed by suppertime, making a nest in the rag basket. Or I might find it under a leaf, rigid and shrunken. Who knows. Somebody will carry me out of here too, though not for a while.

  Year Day

  We are living together on the earth.

  The clock’s heart​

  beats in its wooden chest.

  The cats follow the sun through the house.​

  We lie down together at night.

  Today, you work in your office,​

  and I in my study. Sometimes​

  we are busy and casual.

  Sitting here, I can see

  the path we have made on the rug.

  The hermit gives up

  after thirty years of hiding in the jungle.​

  The last door to the last room​

  comes unlatched. Here are the gestures​

  of my hands. Wear them in your hair.

  The Suitor

  We lie back to back. Curtains​

  lift and fall,

  like the chest of someone sleeping.​

  Wind moves the leaves of the box elder;​

  they show their light undersides,​

  turning all at once​

  like a school of fish.

  Suddenly I understand that I am happy.​

  For months this feeling​

  has been coming closer, stopping​

  for short visits, like a timid suitor.

  American Triptych

  1 At the Store

  Clumps of daffodils along the storefront​

  bend low this morning, late snow​

  pushing their bright heads down.

  The flag snaps and tugs at the pole​

  beside the door.

  The old freezer, full of Maine blueberries​

  and breaded scallops, mumbles along.

  A box of fresh bananas on the floor,​

  luminous and exotic... .

  I take what I need from the narrow aisles.

  Cousins arrive like themes and variations.​

  Ansel leans on the counter,​

  remembering other late spring snows,​

  the blue snow of ’32:

  Yes, it was, it was blue.

  Forrest comes and goes quickly​

  with a length of stovepipe, telling​

  about the neighbors’ chimney fire.

  The store is a bandstand. All our voices​

  sound from it, making the same motley​

  American music Ives heard;​

  this piece starting quietly,​

  with the repeated clink of a flagpole​

  pulley in the doorway of a country store.

  2 Down the Road

  Early summer. Sun low over the pond. Down the road the neighbors’ children play baseball in the twilight. I see the ball leave the bat; a moment later the sound reaches me where I sit.

  No deaths or separations, no disappointments in love. They are throwing and hitting the ball. Sometimes it arcs higher than the house, sometimes it tunnels into tall grass at the edge of the hayfield.

  3 Potluck at the Wilmot Flat Baptist Church

  We drive to the Flat on a clear November night. Stars and planets appear in the eastern sky, not yet in the west.

  Voices rise from the social hall downstairs, the clink of silverware and plates, the smell of coffee.

  As we walk into the room faces turn to us, friendly and curious. We are seated at the speakers’ table, next to the town historian, a retired schoolteacher who is lively and precise.

  The table is decorated with red, white, and blue streamers, and framed Time and Newsweek covers of the President, just elected. Someone has tied peanuts to small branches with red, white, and blue yarn, and set the branches upright in lumps of clay at the center of each table.

  After the meal everyone clears food from the tables, and tables from the hall. Then we go up to the sanctuary, where my husband reads poems from the pulpit.

  One woman looks out the window continually. I notice the altar cloth, tasseled and embroidered in gold thread: Till I Come. There is applause after each poem.

  On the way home we pass the white clapboard faces of the library and town hall, luminous in the moonlight, and I remember the first time I ever voted—in a township hall in Michigan

  That same wonderful smell of coffee was in the air, and I found myself among people trying to live ordered lives . . . And again I am struck with love for the Republic.

  Now That We Live

  Fat spider by the door.

  Brow of hayfield, blue​

  eye of pond.

  Sky at night like an open well.

  Whip-Poor-Will calls​

  in the tall grass:

  I belong to the Queen of Heaven!

  The cheerful worm​

  in the cheerful ground.

  Regular shape of meadow and wall​

  under the blue

  imperturbable mountain.