The Woman I Kept to Myself

by Julia Alvarez

  All the king’s horses and all the king’s men. . . .

  If only poetry had made nothing happen!

  If only the president had listened to Auden!

  Faith Chaney, Lulú Pérez, Sunghee Chen—

  there’s a list as long as an epic poem

  of folks who’ll swear a poem has never done

  a thing for them . . . except . . . perhaps adjust

  the sunset view one cloudy afternoon,

  which made them see themselves or see the world

  in a different light—degrees of change so small

  only a poem registers them at all.

  That’s why they can be trusted, why poems

  might save us from what happens in the world.

  READING FOR PLEASURE

  When I read a book I love, I fall in love

  with the author, I can’t help it, the voice

  even if centuries old pierces my heart

  as if along with every reader, I

  were being threaded through a needle’s eye

  that’s being used to stitch the lot of us

  into an uncommon humanity

  of lovers for whom books are love letters

  posted to every man, woman, and child,

  but penned specifically to each of us.

  How many times haven’t I stroked the sheets

  of my Riverside Shakespeare, or pressed my lips

  to my dog-eared Dickinson! I pine for Keats

  whenever I read his odes, and I confess

  I want to be Maud when I reread Yeats.

  Each time, I teach George Herbert, I caress

  the page on which my favorite poem appears

  as if to soothe the weary minister

  who asks, Who’d have thought my shrivel’d hart

  could have recovered greenesse? I did, George!

  Perhaps I picked up this desire from them

  of wanting my readers to fall in love

  with hairbands, willow trees, lawn ornaments:

  this odd and wondrous world which would be lost

  without our recreations—those who write,

  but principally those who read for pleasure,

  breathing life into dead characters.

  And now, like them, I lie on these cold sheets,

  waiting to be a woman once again.

  You who are reading these words come closer.

  DIRECT ADDRESS

  I love those poems where writers turn to me,

  addressing me as you—and though I know

  that thousands upon thousands of readers

  have trod his Leaves of Grass, I’m still convinced

  it’s me Whitman’s instructing when he writes,

  Look for me under your bootsoles.

  The signs of those we love are everywhere,

  their ghostly faces rushing by on trains

  or forming in the clouds; nurseries belie

  the stony closures in the graveyard.

  That is the only way the dead come back

  as far as I can tell. My grandfather

  surfaces in the locust’s gnarled trunk,

  so comforting to touch his face again.

  The bulldog wears my fourth grade teacher’s scowl;

  I back away as when I was a child.

  Pachelbel’s canon calms like Chucha’s arms.

  And what a shock to find in a Vuillard

  my grandmother peering out as if to catch

  the lazy maids at their shenanigans.

  I’d like to think this is how I’ll come back:

  lines in a poem that spring upon your lips,

  though who the author was has slipped your mind.

  It’s agency, not fame, I want: my words

  at work, a slap awake, a soothing hand.

  But since death’s likely to transform my wish,

  there’s no direct address that I can give

  where you should look for me. So you (yes, you!),

  keep watch! I could be under your bootsoles

  or inside this poem already inside you.

  PASSING ON

  Emily in one hand, Walt in the other,

  that’s how I learned my craft, struggling

  to navigate my own way between them

  and get to where I wanted to end up:

  some place dead center in the human heart.

  I’ve had an odyssey with both along:

  Emily with her slant sense of directions;

  and rowdy Walt, so loud and in my face,

  I’ve had to stuff his mouth with leaves of grass

  at times to hear my own song of myself!

  Such mixtures are my forte after all,

  Since I prefer the hyphenated voice,

  a little of this, a little of that,

  my tías gossiping while rolling dough,

  my mother malapropping her clichés

  (Don’t try to judge a forest by its leaves),

  Gladys intoning her sad boleros

  as she sweeps out the house of childhood,

  Milagros with her saucy salsa songs,

  my godmother telling her rosary beads.

  And most of these voices not in English,

  some in Spanish, and some in that first tongue

  when all I knew was heartbeat and the hum

  of Mami’s murmuring blood becoming mine.

  And now this mix of voices sails out—

  a Tower of Babel crammed in Noah’s ark—

  into the future silences beyond

  where I can go and where those yet unborn

  might read what’s left of me, this voice

  I now pass on, my own, and not my own.

  Keeping Watch

  EL SERENO

  Nights of my childhood, he made his rounds,

  the old sereno with his dim flashlight

  whose batteries were always dying out.

  I found out why: the maids would borrow them

  to play their little radio all day long.

  (How else keep up their spirits but with song?)

  In their distraction, I would slip away

  to the sereno’s hut, waiting for him

  to wake up midday, grim-eyed, sour-faced.

  “What do you want?” He’d shoo me off to play.

  Even back then, I was impressed by him:

  his wise-man face; his narrowed, piercing eyes;

  his lack of interest in frivolities—

  untangling my kite string, baiting my line.

  He was worn out with carrying the load

  of all he’d seen during his dark patrols.

  Some nights, he’d stop—I’d hold my breath

  until his footsteps passed—All’s well. Dream on.

  Sereno was the name I knew him by.

  Serene and dew of night, his homonyms.

  A lifetime later, I’ll wake up mid-night,

  to utter silence—2 A.M.! That time

  when our eternal, mortal loneliness;

  the losses that await us or have come

  steal like intruders into our sleepless minds.

  “What do I want?” the ancient question lurks.

  Serenity, to bear the heavy load

  with grace. High spirits to inspire the heart

  with song and not alarm the ones I love—

  those dreamers who will soon be waking up.

  LOOKING UP

  Why is it we like looking at the sky?

  In part, of course, we’re checking weather:

  masses of dark clouds or a stormy haze

  or breakthrough blue can alter a day’s plan.

  But even after we’ve gotten the gist

  of mist or drizzle, we keep looking up—

  perhaps a habit copied from the Greeks

  who used the heavens as a crystal ball,

  foretelling future from the flights of birds

  or leaves blown in the air and spinning down.

  In the more recent past, aston
omers

  studying the stars predicted character.

  And not counting the Moslems who look east,

  and Buddhists whose third eye is looking in,

  most other world religions aim their prayers

  skyward where a Higher Power resides.

  I’m no exception, I’m still suffering

  from that residual spiritual tic

  of looking upward for more certainty,

  a dove descending, angels winging down.

  But though I’m scavenging for the divine,

  what holds my gaze are signs we put up there:

  some child’s runaway kite, a jet’s brief glint,

  light poles and traffic lights, the Goodyear Blimp—

  the margins of our human drama where

  we battle desperately for some control,

  which we are bound to lose, the kite string snaps,

  a patch of color sails into the blue,

  beautiful in its insignificance.

  We watch it as it dances out of view.

  WHAT WE ASK FOR

  The only thing that Jesus ever asked,

  of a personal nature, was on the night

  before he died: he asked three apostles,

  James, John, and Peter, to stay up with him.

  My soul is sorrowing to the point of death.

  It was his humanness that needed them.

  What else to ask for since he had to die?

  Three times he asked, three times they fell asleep,

  until sweet Jesus finally said, Sleep on.

  It’s done. My hour has already come.

  The Sufi mystic Rumi urges us,

  Do not go back to sleep. And Lord Krishna

  rallies the sleepy Arjuna to arise

  and join the fray of an awakened life.

  Buddha has taught us to breathe in, breathe out,

  in order to stay mindful, stay awake

  watching our current incarnation roll:

  ¡Latina poet! Next time around, who knows?

  It seems the great religions all agree

  in what they ask of followers: Stay up!

  As an insomniac, I understand

  the loneliness of waking late at night,

  wandering the house, checking on loved ones’ sleep,

  covering a child, filling a water glass.

  Outside a cold rain falls. This night could be

  the last of a doomed planet gone to sleep.

  My soul is sorrowing because I know

  that staying up won’t save a blessed thing.

  But oh, sweet Jesus! given what must come,

  what else to ask or give our companions?

  WHAT WAS IT THAT I WANTED?

  What was it that I wanted? I forget—

  to have a place called home, these quiet hills

  I look on as I write, the trees I grew

  as seedlings now full-blown and full of birds,

  sparrows and thrushes singing as I work;

  even the snow beating against the panes—

  I wanted that. And you, dear one, stopping

  outside my study door, then going on . . .

  that loving pause that longs but still respects

  my solitude—I wanted you most of all!

  I wanted a voice, oh yes, one that would tell

  simply but with the mute heart’s eloquence

  who I was, what my brief time on earth

  was all about. And more, there was always more:

  I wanted to be wanted, to belong

  in school, country, gender, neighborhood—

  one of the good girls everybody loves,

  the heroine of the story of my life

  with a happy ending. I wanted that—

  who knows why anymore?—but yes, I did.

  Some things I wanted but I couldn’t get

  I wanted not to want—my mother’s love,

  that look of urgent cherishing I’ve glimpsed

  in the soft eyes of dogs and the dying.

  I wanted Papi’s love unhinged from shame,

  his own and mine. I wanted not to feel

  that yearning for the child I never had.

  What else was it I wanted? I forget.

  Or could it be the longing that I want

  To make me stretch beyond the lot I got?

  KEEPING WATCH

  Watching the baby, I think of the dying,

  of their grimaces, of how they throw their arms

  or kick their legs, struggling to free themselves

  from some invisible entanglement.

  I think of my concentration on each breath

  they’re laboring to take, pacing my own

  to theirs as if to help with the hard work

  of staying alive. I stand by, hoping

  to hear their voice saying my name

  one last time—as if I were watching the baby,

  listening for the slightest sound of sense:

  a doubled syllable; a wail that means

  Pick me up! I’m bored; or outraged scream,

  I want my mother now! I want my milk!

  Watching the dying, I’m struck by the same look

  as in the baby’s eyes, taking me in

  without a judgment in the world as if

  they’re simply curious as to who I am,

  a naked look which I return, Oh yes,

  I see you, too. We are here together.

  Watching them both, I think about myself,

  how similar I feel, same helplessness,

  same tenderness, same forgiveness for all

  that’s over and to come, all eyes, all ears.

  I hold the freckled or the spotless hand

  to feel its living warmth against my warmth,

  to smell the smells, putrid or sweet,

  that either way spell life. And doing so,

  I realize that it’s me who comes alive,

  watching those coming in, those going out.

  WHY I WRITE

  Unless I write things down I never know

  what I think, no less feel, about the world.

  I found out first in print that I prefer

  white wine to red, the blues to rock,

  the winter’s terseness to the spring’s green gab—

  conclusions reached in short stories or poems.

  Once I, a vegetarian, tried red meat

  because a recently divorced woman

  on a blind date (in a poem I was writing)

  ordered a well-done steak which turned out raw

  and bled when she cut into it, a taste

  I had to taste in order to describe it.

  I’m not kidding: unless I write things down,

  I don’t know what I want: long lists of pros

  and cons on a bedside pad, love letters

  (How else can I be certain I’m in love?),

  thank you’s for gifts I never thought I’d use

  until I jotted down my gratitude,

  rhetorical addresses to a God

  who only answers when I write Him down.

  As far as I’m concerned the world’s a blur

  which each word in a sentence focuses,

  as if I were fine-tuning the lenses

  on my binoculars from bird to thrush

  to Bicknell’s thrush singing in the maple

  for lack of pen and paper this spring day.

  In short I don’t know I’m alive unless

  I’m writing as I’ll only be convinced

  —when I am scribbled on some stony epitaph—

  that I am gone . . . and the rest is silence.

  DID I REDEEM MYSELF?

  Did I redeem myself, Mami? Papi?

  Was I the native child you dreamed up

  as you lay in the foreign bed you’d made

  your first and failed exile in New York?

  Did I excuse your later desertion,

  leaving your friends behind to die? Did I

  help
to reframe that choice as sacrifice:

  you gave your girls the lives they would have missed

  growing up in a double tyranny

  of patriarchy and dictatorship?

  Did I redeem myself, my sisters, for those nights

  I kept you up with Chaucer lullabies?

  My love poems at your weddings? My calls

  at midnight with a broken heart? And you,

  dear lovers whom I mistook for husbands,

  do you forgive me for forsaking you?

  I heard—or thought I heard—a stronger call.

  This love did prove the truest, after all.

  And friends, can this be tender for your care?

  Have I kept some of my promises here?

  But harder still, my two Americas.

  Quisqueya, did I pay my debt to you,

  drained by dictatorship and poverty

  of so much talent? Did I get their ear,

  telling your stories in the sultan’s court

  until they wept our tears? And you, Oh Beautiful,

  whose tongue wooed me to service, have I proved

  my passion would persist beyond my youth?

  Finally, my readers what will you decide

  when all that’s left of me will be these lines?

  NOTES

  The series “Seven Trees” is for Sara Eichner and Berit Gordon.

  “Abbot Academy” is for Ruth Stevenson as well as for

  Jean St. Pierre, two dear teachers who trained me at Abbot.

  “Grand Baby” is for Naomi Stella Gordon.

  “Addison’s Vision” is for Addison Hall.

  “Signs” is for Anamie Curlin.

  “All’s Clear” is for Susan Bergholz.

  “Tom” is for Tom Krueger.

  “‘Poetry makes nothing happen’?” is for Jay Parini. The title is a quote from W. H. Auden’s poem “In Memory of W. B. Yeats.” The question mark is mine.

  “Looking Up” is for Sara Eichner, inspired by her skyscapes.

  “Keeping Watch” is for Mom and Dad.

  Some of these poems have been previously published:

  “Seven Trees” was first published as a limited edition book (North Andover: Kat Ran Press, 1998).

  “By Accident,” in A Poem of Her Own: Voices of American Women Yesterday and Today (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003).