by Jane Kenyon
Let Evening Come
(1990)
JANE KENYON
Let Evening Come
(1990)
— for Pauline Kenyon
So strange, life is. Why people do not
go around in a continual state of surprise
is beyond me.
William Maxwell
Three Songs at the End of Summer
I
A second crop of hay lies cut
and turned. Five gleaming crows
search and peck between the rows.
They make a low, companionable squawk,
and like midwives and undertakers
possess a weird authority.
Crickets leap from the stubble,
parting before me like the Red Sea.
The garden sprawls and spoils.
Across the lake the campers have learned
to water-ski. They have, or they haven’t.
Sounds of the instructor’s megaphone
suffuse the hazy air. “Relax! Relax!”
Cloud shadows rush over drying hay,
fences, dusty lane, and railroad ravine.
The first yellowing fronds of goldenrod
brighten the margins of the woods.
Schoolbooks, carpools, pleated skirts;
water, silver-still, and a vee of geese.
II
The cicada’s dry monotony breaks
over me. The days are bright
and free, bright and free.
Then why did I cry today
for an hour, with my whole
body, the way babies cry?
III
A white, indifferent morning sky,
and a crow, hectoring from its nest
high in the hemlock, a nest as big
as a laundry basket. . .
In my childhood
I stood under a dripping oak,
while autumnal fog eddied around my feet,
waiting for the school bus
with a dread that took my breath away.
The damp dirt road gave off
this same complex organic scent.
I had the new books—words, numbers,
and operations with numbers I did not
comprehend—and crayons, unspoiled
by use, in a blue canvas satchel
with red leather straps.
Spruce, inadequate, and alien
I stood at the side of the road.
It was the only life I had.
After the Hurricane
I walk the fibrous woodland path to the pond.
Acorns break from the oaks, drop
through amber autumn air
which does not stir. The dog runs way ahead.
I find him snuffling on the shore
among water weeds that detached in the surge;
a broad, soft band of rufous pine needles;
a bar of sand; and shards of mica
glinting in the bright but tepid sun.
Here, really, we had only hard rain.
The cell I bought for the lamp
and kettles of water I drew remain
unused. All day we were restless, drowsy,
afraid, and finally, let down:
we didn’t get to demonstrate our grit.
In the full, still pond the likeness
of golden birch leaves and the light they emit
shines exact. When the dog sees himself
his hackles rise. I stir away his trouble
with a stick.
A crow breaks in upon our satisfaction.
We look up to see it lift heavily
from its nest high in the hemlock, and the bough
equivocate in the peculiar light. It was
the author of Walden, wasn’t it,
who made a sacrament of saying no.
After Working Long on One Thing
Through the screen door
I hear a hummingbird, inquiring
for nectar among the stalwart
hollyhocks—an erratic flying
ruby, asking for sweets among
the sticky-throated flowers.
The sky won’t darken in the west
until ten. Where shall I turn
this light and tired mind?
Waking in January before Dawn
Something that sounded like the town
plow just went by: there must be snow.
What was it I fell asleep thinking
while the shutters strained on their hooks
in the wind, and the window frames
creaked as they do when it’s terribly cold,
and getting colder fast? I pulled
the covers over my head.
Now through lace curtains I can see
the huge Wolf Moon going down,
and soon the sky will lighten, turning
first gray, then pink, then blue. . . .
How frightened I was as a child, waking
at Grandma’s, though I saw
that the animal about to pounce
—a dreadful, vaguely organized beast—
was really the sewing machine.
Now the dresser reclaims visibility,
and yesterday’s clothes cohere
humpbacked and headless on the chair.
Catching Frogs
I crouched beside the deepest pool,
and the smell of damp and moss
rose rich between my knees. Water-striders
creased the silver-black silky surface.
Rapt, I hardly breathed. Gnats
roiled in a shaft of sun.
Back again after supper I’d see
a nose poke up by the big flat stone
at the lip of the fall; then the humped
eyes and the slippery emerald head,
freckled brown. The buff membrane
pulsed under the jaw while
subtleties of timing played in my mind.
With a patience that came like grace
I waited. Mosquitoes moaned all
around. Better to wait. Better to reach
from behind. ... It grew dark.
I came into the warm, bright room
where Father held aloft the evening
paper, and there was talk, and maybe
laughter, though I don’t remember laughter.
In the Grove: The Poet at Ten
She lay on her back in the timothy
and gazed past the doddering
auburn heads of sumac.
A cloud—huge, calm,
and dignified—covered the sun
but did not, could not, put it out.
The light surged back again.
Nothing could rouse her then
from that joy so violent
it was hard to distinguish from pain.
The Pear
There is a moment in middle age
when you grow bored, angered
by your middling mind,
afraid.
That day the sun
burns hot and bright,
making you more desolate.
It happens subtly, as when a pear
spoils from the inside out,
and you may not be aware
until things have gone too far.
Christmas Away from Home
Her sickness brought me to Connecticut.
Mornings I walk the dog: that part of life
is intact. Who’s painted, who’s insulated
or
put siding on, who’s burned the lawn
with lime—that’s the news on Ardmore Street.
The leaves of the neighbor’s respectable
rhododendrons curl under in the cold.
He has backed the car
through the white nimbus of its exhaust
and disappeared for the day.
In the hiatus between mayors
the city has left leaves in the gutters,
and passing cars lift them in maelstroms.
We pass the house two doors down, the one
with the wildest lights in the neighborhood,
an establishment without irony.
All summer their putto empties a water jar,
their St. Francis feeds the birds.
Now it’s angels, festoons, waist-high
candles, and swans pulling sleighs.
Two hundred miles north I’d let the dog
run among birches and the black shade of pines.
I miss the hills, the woods and stony
streams, where the swish of jacket sleeves
against my sides seems loud, and a crow
caws sleepily at dawn.
By now the streams must run under a skin
of ice, white air-bubbles passing erratically,
like blood cells through a vein. Soon the mail,
forwarded, will begin to reach me here.
Taking Down the Tree
“Give me some light!” cries Hamlet’s
uncle midway through the murder
of Gonzago. “Light! Light!” cry scattering
courtesans. Here, as in Denmark,
it’s dark at four, and even the moon
shines with only half a heart.
The ornaments go down into the box:
the silver spaniel, My Darling
on its collar, from Mother’s childhood
in Illinois; the balsa jumping jack
my brother and I fought over,
pulling limb from limb. Mother
drew it together again with thread
while I watched, feeling depraved
at the age of ten.
With something more than caution
I handle them, and the lights, with their
tin star-shaped reflectors, brought along
from house to house, their pasteboard
toy suitcase increasingly flimsy.
Tick, tick, the desiccated needles drop.
By suppertime all that remains is the scent
of balsam fir. If it’s darkness
we’re having, let it be extravagant.
Dark Morning: Snow
It falls on the vole, nosing somewhere
through weeds, and on the open
eye of the pond. It makes the mail
come late.
The nuthatch spirals head first
down the tree.
I’m sleepy and benign in the dark.
There’s nothing I want. . . .
Small Early Valentine
Wind plays the spy,
opens and closes doors,
looks behind shutters—
a succession of clatters. I
know perfectly well
where you are: in that
not-here-place you go to,
the antipodes. I have your note
with flights and phone numbers
for the different days. . . .
Dear one, I have made the bed
with the red sheets. Our
dog’s the one who lay
on the deep pile of dung,
lifting his head and ears
when after twenty years
Odysseus approached him.
After the Dinner Party
A late-blooming burgundy hollyhock sways
across the kitchen window in a light breeze
as I draw a tumbler of well-water at the sink.
We’re face to face, as in St. Paul’s Epistles
or the later novels of Henry James.
The cold rains of autumn have begun.
Driving to Hanover I must have seen
a thousand frogs in the headlights
crossing the gleaming road. Like sheep urged
by a crouching dog they converged
and flowed, as they do every fall.
I couldn’t help hitting some.
At dinner I laughed with the rest,
but in truth I prefer the sound
of pages turning, and coals shifting
abruptly in the stove. I left before ten
pleading a long drive home.
The smell of woodsmoke hung
over the small villages along the way.
I passed the huge cold gray stone
buildings left by the chaste Shakers.
Any window will still open with one finger.
Hands to work, and hearts to God. . . .
Why do people give dinner parties? Why did I
say I’d come? I suppose no one there was entirely
at ease. Again the flower leans this way:
you know it’s impolite to stare. I’ll put
out the light. . . . And there’s an end to it.
Leaving Barbados
Just as the sun pitched summarily over
the edge of the world we arrived a week
ago. In the afterglow the sunburnt guests
finished their drinks by the pool.
That night we ate breadfruit, yams,
and flying fish in a dining room
with potted palms for walls. Beyond
the shoals a schooner, its rigging strung
with lights, passed by under moon and stars.
A scrawny kitten mewed beneath our chairs.
Letting go into sleep . . . the sound of crockery
being stacked in the kitchen, surf and wind.
A small dog barked inconclusively.
Next morning walking on the beach
I caught a whiff of marijuana mingled
with the reek of chicken coops, then
something like sterno, and fire.
Morning glories ramped over a tumbledown house.
Back at the hotel we settled in.
Levon came every day, wearing his T-shirt
that looked like the front of a tux—
which I saw one day drying on a porch
down the beach—and his heart-shaped
sunglasses, pushed back on his leonine
head so I could see his eyes, which were kind.
Cigarettes—funny cigarettes—he’d be your man.
Afternoons he surfed,
his beat-up board secured to his ankle
by a long strap. Perhaps that’s how
the long scar came to be on his thigh.
The wind was up; the surf was loud and high.
Now our taxi strains uphill, its doors
ajog, then rushes down the narrow lane.
In the cut-over cane two egrets strut and peck.
Good-bye Barbados—good-bye water, hiss
and thunder; scented winds; clattering palms;
stupefying sun and rum; good-bye turquoise,
pink, copen, lavender, black and red.
Tonight another couple will sleep in our bed.
The Blue Bowl
Like primitives we buried the cat
with his bowl. Bare-handed
we scraped sand and gravel
back into the hole.
They fell with a hiss
and thud on his side,
on his long red fur, the white feathers
between his toes, and his
long, not to say aquiline, nose.
We stood and brushed each other off.
The
re are sorrows keener than these.
Silent the rest of the day, we worked,
ate, stared, and slept. It stormed
all night; now it clears, and a robin
burbles from a dripping bush
like the neighbor who means well
but always says the wrong thing.
The Letter
Bad news arrives in her distinctive hand.
The cancer has returned, this time
to his brain. Surgery impossible,
treatments underway. Hair loss, bouts
of sleeplessness and agitation at night,
exhaustion during the day . . .
I snap the blue leash onto the D-ring
of the dog’s collar, and we cross
Route 4, then cut through the hayfield
to the pond road, where I let him run
along with my morbidity.
The trees have leafed out—only just—
and the air is misty with sap.
So green, so brightly, richly succulent,
this arbor over the road . . .
Sunlight penetrates in golden drops.
We come to the place where a neighbor
is taking timber from his land.
There’s a smell of lacerated earth
and pine. Hardwood smells different.
His truck is gone.
Now you can see well up the slope,
see ledges of rock and ferns breaking forth
among the stumps and cast-aside limbs
and branches.
The place will heal itself in time, first