Selected Poems II (1976-1986)

by Margaret Atwood

My sister and I are sewing

  a red shirt for my daughter.

  She pins, I hem, we pass the scissors

  back & forth across the table.

  Children should not wear red,

  a man once told me.

  Young girls should not wear red.

  In some countries it is the color

  of death; in others passion,

  in others war, in others anger,

  in others the sacrifice

  of shed blood. A girl should be

  a veil, a white shadow, bloodless

  as a moon on water; not

  dangerous; she should

  keep silent and avoid

  red shoes, red stockings, dancing.

  Dancing in red shoes will kill you.

  ii

  But red is our color by birth-

  right, the color of tense joy

  & spilled pain that joins us

  to each other. We stoop over

  the table, the constant pull

  of the earth's gravity furrowing

  our bodies, tugging us down.

  The shirt we make is stained

  with our words, our stories.

  The shadows the light casts

  on the wall behind us multiply:

  This is the procession

  of old leathery mothers,

  the moon's last quarter

  before the blank night,

  mothers like worn gloves

  wrinkled to the shapes of their lives,

  passing the work from hand to hand,

  mother to daughter,

  a long thread of red blood, not yet broken.

  iii

  Let me tell you the story

  about the Old Woman.

  First: she weaves your body.

  Second: she weaves your soul.

  Third: she is hated & feared,

  though not by those who know her.

  She is the witch you burned

  by daylight and crept from your home

  to consult & bribe at night. The love

  that tortured you you blamed on her.

  She can change her form,

  and like your mother she is covered with fur.

  The black Madonna

  studded with miniature

  arms & legs, like tin stars,

  to whom they offer agony

  and red candles when there is no other

  help or comfort, is also her.

  iv

  It is January, it's raining, this gray

  ordinary day. My

  daughter, I would like

  your shirt to be just a shirt,

  no charms or fables. But fables

  and charms swarm here

  in this January world,

  entrenching us like snow, and few

  are friendly to you; though

  they are strong,

  potent as viruses

  or virginal angels dancing

  on the heads of pins,

  potent as the hearts

  of whores torn out

  by the roots because they were thought

  to be solid gold, or heavy

  as the imaginary

  jewels they used to split

  the heads of Jews for.

  It may not be true

  that one myth cancels another.

  Nevertheless, in a corner

  of the hem, where it will not be seen,

  where you will inherit

  it, I make this tiny

  stitch, my private magic.

  v

  The shirt is finished: red

  with purple flowers and pearl

  buttons. My daughter puts it on,

  hugging the color

  which means nothing to her

  except that it is warm

  and bright. In her bare

  feet she runs across the floor,

  escaping from us, her new game,

  waving her red arms

  in delight, and the air

  explodes with banners.

  Night Poem

  There is nothing to be afraid of,

  it is only the wind

  changing to the east, it is only

  your father the thunder

  your mother the rain

  In this country of water

  with its beige moon damp as a mushroom,

  its drowned stumps and long birds

  that swim, where the moss grows

  on all sides of the trees

  and your shadow is not your shadow

  but your reflection,

  your true parents disappear

  when the curtain covers your door.

  We are the others,

  the ones from under the lake

  who stand silently beside your bed

  with our heads of darkness.

  We have come to cover you

  with red wool,

  with our tears and distant whispers.

  You rock in the rain's arms,

  the chilly ark of your sleep,

  while we wait, your night

  father and mother,

  with our cold hands and dead flashlight,

  knowing we are only

  the wavering shadows thrown

  by one candle, in this echo

  you will hear twenty years later.

  All Bread

  All bread is made of wood,

  cow dung, packed brown moss,

  the bodies of dead animals, the teeth

  and backbones, what is left

  after the ravens. This dirt

  flows through the stems into the grain,

  into the arm, nine strokes

  of the axe, skin from a tree,

  good water which is the first

  gift, four hours.

  Live burial under a moist cloth,

  a silver dish, the row

  of white famine bellies

  swollen and taut in the oven,

  lungfuls of warm breath stopped

  in the heat from an old sun.

  Good bread has the salt taste

  of your hands after nine

  strokes of the axe, the salt

  taste of your mouth, it smells

  of its own small death, of the deaths

  before and after.

  Lift these ashes

  into your mouth, your blood;

  to know what you devour

  is to consecrate it,

  almost. All bread must be broken

  so it can be shared. Together

  we eat this earth.

  You Begin

  You begin this way:

  this is your hand,

  this is your eye,

  that is a fish, blue and flat

  on the paper, almost

  the shape of an eye.

  This is your mouth, this is an O

  or a moon, whichever

  you like. This is yellow.

  Outside the window

  is the rain, green

  because it is summer, and beyond that

  the trees and then the world,

  which is round and has only

  the colors of these nine crayons.

  This is the world, which is fuller

  and more difficult to learn than I have said.

  You are right to smudge it that way

  with the red and then

  the orange: the world burns.

  Once you have learned these words

  you will learn that there are more

  words than you can ever learn.

  The word hand floats above your hand

  like a small cloud over a lake.

  The word hand anchors

  your hand to this table,

  your hand is a warm stone

  I hold between two words.

  This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,

  which is round but not flat and has more colors

  than we can see.

  It begins, it has an end
,

  this is what you will

  come back to, this is your hand.

  From TRUE STORIES (1981)

  True Stories

  i

  Don't ask for the true story;

  why do you need it?

  It's not what I set out with

  or what I carry.

  What I'm sailing with,

  a knife, blue fire,

  luck, a few good words

  that still work, and the tide.

  ii

  The true story was lost

  on the way down to the beach, it's something

  I never had, that black tangle

  of branches in a shifting light,

  my blurred footprints

  filling with salt

  water, this handful

  of tiny bones, this owl's kill;

  a moon, crumpled papers, a coin,

  the glint of an old picnic,

  the hollows made by lovers

  in sand a hundred

  years ago: no clue.

  iii

  The true story lies

  among the other stories,

  a mess of colors, like jumbled clothing

  thrown off or away,

  like hearts on marble, like syllables, like

  butchers' discards.

  The true story is vicious

  and multiple and untrue

  after all. Why do you

  need it? Don't ever

  ask for the true story.

  Landcrab I

  A lie, that we come from water.

  The truth is we were born

  from stones, dragons, the sea's

  teeth, as you testify,

  with your crust and jagged scissors.

  Hermit, hard socket

  for a timid eye,

  you're a soft gut scuttling

  sideways, a blue skull,

  round bone on the prowl.

  Wolf of treeroots and gravelly holes,

  a mouth on stilts,

  the husk of a small demon.

  Attack, voracious

  eating, and flight:

  it's a sound routine

  for staying alive on edges.

  Then there's the tide, and that dance

  you do for the moon

  on wet sand, claws raised

  to fend off your mate,

  your coupling a quick

  dry clatter of rocks.

  For mammals

  with their lobes and tubers,

  scruples and warm milk,

  you've nothing but contempt.

  Here you are, a frozen scowl

  targeted in flashlight,

  then gone: a piece of what

  we are, not all,

  my stunted child, my momentary

  face in the mirror,

  my tiny nightmare.

  Landcrab II

  The sea sucks at its own

  edges, in and out with the moon.

  Tattered brown fronds

  (shredded nylon stockings,

  feathers, the remnants of hands)

  wash against my skin.

  As for the crab, she's climbed

  a tree and sticks herself

  to the bark with her adroit

  spikes; she jerks

  her stalked eyes at me, seeing

  a meat shadow,

  food or a predator.

  I smell the pulp

  of her body, faint odor

  of rotting salt,

  as she smells mine,

  working those martian palps:

  seawater in leather.

  I'm a category, a noun

  in a language not human,

  infra-red in moonlight,

  a tidal wave in the air.

  Old fingernail, old mother,

  I'm up to scant harm

  tonight; though you don't care,

  you're no-one's metaphor,

  you have your own paths

  and rituals, frayed snails

  and soaked nuts, waterlogged sacks

  to pick over, soggy chips and crusts.

  The beach is all yours, wordless

  and ripe once I'm off it,

  wading towards the moored boats

  and blue lights of the dock.

  Postcard

  I'm thinking about you. What else can I say?

  The palm trees on the reverse

  are a delusion; so is the pink sand.

  What we have are the usual

  fractured Coke bottles and the smell

  of backed-up drains, too sweet,

  like a mango on the verge

  of rot, which we have also.

  The air clear sweat, mosquitoes

  & their tracks; birds, blue & elusive.

  Time comes in waves here, a sickness, one

  day after the other rolling on;

  I move up, it's called

  awake, then down into the uneasy

  nights but never

  forward. The roosters crow

  for hours before dawn, and a prodded

  child howls & howls

  on the pocked road to school.

  In the hold with the baggage

  there are two prisoners,

  their heads shaved by bayonets, & ten crates

  of queasy chicks. Each spring

  there's a race of cripples, from the store

  to the church. This is the sort of junk

  I carry with me; and a clipping

  about democracy from the local paper.

  Outside the window

  they're building the damn hotel,

  nail by nail, someone's

  crumbling dream. A universe that includes you

  can't be all bad, but

  does it? At this distance

  you're a mirage, a glossy image

  fixed in the posture

  of the last time I saw you.

  Turn you over, there's the place

  for the address. Wish you were

  here. Love comes

  in waves like the ocean, a sickness which goes on

  & on, a hollow cave

  in the head, filling & pounding, a kicked ear.

  Nothing

  Nothing like love to put blood

  back in the language,

  the difference between the beach and its

  discrete rocks & shards, a hard

  cuneiform, and the tender cursive

  of waves; bone & liquid fishegg, desert

  & saltmarsh, a green push

  out of death. The vowels plump

  again like lips or soaked fingers, and the fingers

  themselves move around these

  softening pebbles as around skin. The sky's

  not vacant and over there but close

  against your eyes, molten, so near

  you can taste it. It tastes of

  salt. What touches

  you is what you touch.

  From NOTES TOWARDS A POEM THAT CAN NEVER BE WRITTEN

  A Conversation

  The man walks on the southern beach

  with sunglasses and a casual shirt

  and two beautiful women.

  He's a maker of machines

  for pulling out toenails,

  sending electric shocks

  through brains or genitals.

  He doesn't test or witness,

  he only sells. My dear lady,

  he says, You don't know

  those people. There's nothing

  else they understand. What could I do?

  she said. Why was he at that party?

  Flying Inside Your Own Body

  Your lungs fill & spread themselves,

  wings of pink blood, and your bones

  empty themselves and become hollow.

  When you breathe in you'll lift like a balloon

  and your heart is light too & huge,

  beating with pure joy, pure helium.

  The sun's white winds blow through you,
/>   there's nothing above you,

  you see the earth now as an oval jewel,

  radiant & seablue with love.

  It's only in dreams you can do this.

  Waking, your heart is a shaken fist,

  a fine dust clogs the air you breathe in;

  the sun's a hot copper weight pressing straight

  down on the thick pink rind of your skull.

  It's always the moment just before gunshot.

  You try & try to rise but you cannot.

  Torture

  What goes on in the pauses

  of this conversation?

  Which is about free will

  and politics and the need for passion.