by Jane Kenyon
LAST POEMS
from Otherwise (1996) and A Hundred White Daffodils (1999)
Happiness
There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.
And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.
No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.
It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.
Mosaic of the Nativity: Serbia, Winter 1993
On the domed ceiling God
is thinking:
I made them my joy,
and everything else I created
I made to bless them.
But see what they do!
I know their hearts
and arguments:
“We’re descended from
Cain. Evil is nothing new,
so what does it matter now
if we shell the infirmary,
and the well where the fearful
and rash alike must
come for water?”
God thinks Mary into being.
Suspended at the apogee
of the golden dome,
she curls in a brown pod,
and inside her the mind
of Christ, cloaked in blood,
lodges and begins to grow.
Man Eating
The man at the table across from mine
is eating yogurt. His eyes, following
the progress of the spoon, cross briefly
each time it nears his face. Time,
and the world with all its principalities,
might come to an end as prophesied
by the Apostle John, but what about
this man, so completely present
to the little carton with its cool,
sweet food, which has caused no animal
to suffer, and which he is eating
with a pearl-white plastic spoon.
Man Waking
The room was already light when
he awoke, and his body curled
like a grub suddenly exposed
when something dislodges a stone.
Work. He was more than an hour
late. Let that pass, he thought.
He pulled the covers over his head.
The smell of his skin and hair
offended him. Now he drew his legs
up a little more, and sent
his forehead down to meet his knees.
His knees felt cool.
A surprising amount of light
came through the blanket. He could
easily see his hand. Not dark enough,
not the utter darkness he desired.
Man Sleeping
Large flakes of snow fall slowly, far
apart, like whales who cannot find mates
in the vast blue latitudes.
Why do I think of the man asleep
on the grassy bank outside the Sackler
Museum in Washington?
It was a chill
afternoon. He lay, no doubt, on everything
he owned, belly-down, his head twisted
awkwardly to the right, mouth open
in abandon.
He looked
like a child who has fallen asleep
still dressed on the top of the covers,
or like Abel, broken, at his brother’s feet.
Cesarean
The surgeon with his unapologetic
blade parted darkness, revealing
day. Then from her large clay
he drew toward his masked
face my small clay. The clatter,
the white light, the vast freedom
were terrible. Outside in, oh, inside
out, and why did everybody shout?
Surprise
He suggests pancakes at the local diner,
followed by a walk in search of mayflowers,
while friends convene at the house
bearing casseroles and a cake, their cars
pulled close along the sandy shoulders
of the road, where tender ferns unfurl
in the ditches, and this year’s budding leaves
push last year’s spectral leaves from the tips
of the twigs of the ash trees. The gathering
itself is not what astounds her, but the casual
accomplishment with which he has lied.
No
The last prayer had been said,
and it was time to turn away
from the casket, poised on its silver
scaffolding over the open hole
that smelled like a harrowed field.
And then I heard a noise that seemed
not to be human. It was more like wind
among leafless trees, or cattle lowing
in a distant barn. I paused with one
hand on the roof of the car,
while the sound rose in pitch, then
cohered into language: No, don’t do this
to me! No, no . . . / And each of us
stood where we were, unsure
whether to stay, or leave her there.
Drawing from the Past
Only Mama and I were at home.
We ate tomato sandwiches
with sweeps of mayonnaise
on indifferent white bread.
Surely it was September,
my older brother at school.
The tomatoes were fragrant
and richly red, perhaps the last
before frost.
I was alert to the joy of eating
sandwiches alone with Mama, bare
feet braced on the underpinnings
of the abraded kitchen table.
Once I’d made a mark in the wood
by pressing too hard as I traced
the outline of a horse.
I was no good at drawing—from life,
or from imagination. My brother
was good at it, and I was alert
to that, too.
The Call
I lunged out of sleep toward the ringing
phone, from a dream in which, carrying
plastic bags of her inhalers,
I struggled
up the icy drive.
Still startled, I sit up in bed
in the dark with my glasses on.
The clock’s blue spectral glow says 4:13.
He’s speeding now to the nursing home
with the clarity that fear alone
confers, to see his mother, it may be,
for the last time. Rain has fallen
all night, and the intimate
smells of wet earth press through
the screen. A sudden stir of air moves
the sere late summer leaves, sounding
for a moment like still more rain.
In the Nursing Home
She is like a horse grazing
a hill pasture that someone makes
smaller by coming every night
to pull the fences in and in.
She has stopped running wide loops,
stopped even the tight circles.
She drops her head to feed; grass
is dust, and the creekbed’s dry.
Master, come with your light
halter. Come and bring her in.
How Like the Sound
How like the sound of laughing weeping
is. I wasn’t sure until I saw your face—
your eyes squeezed shut, and the big
hot tears spurting out.
There you sat, upright, in your mother’s
reclining chair, tattered from the wear
of many years. Not since childhood
had you wept this way, head back, throat
open like a hound. Of course the howling
had to stop. I saw you add call realtor
to your list before your red face
vanished behind the morning Register.
Eating the Cookies
The cousin from Maine, knowing
about her diverticulitis, left out the nuts,
so the cookies weren’t entirely to my taste,
but they were good enough; yes, good enough.
Each time I emptied a drawer or shelf
I permitted myself to eat one.
I cleared the closet of silk caftans
that slipped easily from clattering hangers,
and from the bureau I took her nightgowns
and sweaters, financial documents
neatly cinctured in long gray envelopes,
and the hairnets and peppermints she’d tucked among
Lucite frames abounding with great-grandchildren,
solemn in their Christmas finery.
Finally the drawers were empty,
the bags full, and the largest cookie,
which I had saved for last, lay
solitary in the tin with a nimbus
of crumbs around it. There would be no more
parcels from Portland. I took it up
and sniffed it, and before eating it,
pressed it against my forehead, because
it seemed like the next thing to do.
Spring Evening
Again the thrush affirms
both dusk and dawn. The frog
releases spawn in the warm
inlet of the pond. Ferns
rise with the crescent moon,
and the old farmer
waits to sow his corn.
Prognosis
I walked alone in the chill of dawn
while my mind leapt, as the teachers
of detachment say, like a drunken
monkey. Then a gray shape, an owl,
passed overhead. An owl is not
like a crow. A crow makes convivial
chuckings as it flies,
but the owl flew well beyond me
before I heard it coming, and when it
settled, the bough did not sway.
Afternoon at MacDowell
On a windy summer day the well-dressed
trustees occupy the first row
under the yellow and white striped canopy.
Their drive for capital is over,
and for a while this refuge is secure.
Thin after your second surgery, you wear
the gray summer suit we bought eight
years ago for momentous occasions
in warm weather. My hands rest in my lap,
under the fine cotton shawl embroidered
with mirrors that we bargained for last fall
in Bombay, unaware of your sickness.
The legs of our chairs poke holes
in the lawn. The sun goes in and out
of the grand clouds, making the air alive
with golden light, and then, as if heaven’s
spirits had fallen, everything’s somber again.
After music and poetry we walk to the car.
I believe in the miracles of art, but what
prodigy will keep you safe beside me,
fumbling with the radio while you drive
to find late innings of a Red Sox game?
Fat
The doctor says it’s better for my spine
this way—more fat, more estrogen.
Well, then! There was a time when a wife’s
plump shoulders signified prosperity.
These days my fashionable friends
get by on seaweed milkshakes,
Pall Malls, and vitamin pills. Their clothes
hang elegantly from their clavicles.
As the evening news makes clear
the starving and the besieged maintain
the current standard of beauty without effort.
Whenever two or three gather together
the talk turns dreamily to sausages,
purple cabbages, black beans and rice,
noodles gleaming with cream, yams, and plums,
and chapati fried in ghee.
The Way Things Are in Franklin
Even the undertaker is going out
of business. And since the dime store closed,
we can’t get parakeets on Main Street
anymore, or sleeveless gingham smocks
for keeping Church Fair pie off the ample
fronts of the strong, garrulous wives
of pipefitters and road agents.
The hardware’s done for too.
Yesterday,
a Sunday, I saw the proprietors breaking
up shop, the woman struggling with half
a dozen bicycle tires on each arm,
like bangle bracelets, the man balancing
boxes filled with Teflon pans. The windows
had been soaped to frustrate curiosity,
or pity, or that cheerless satisfaction
we sometimes feel when others fail.
Dutch Interiors
for Caroline
Christ has been done to death
in the cold reaches of northern Europe
a thousand thousand times.
Suddenly bread
and cheese appear on a plate
beside a gleaming pewter beaker of beer.
Now tell me that the Holy Ghost
does not reside in the play of light
on cutlery!
A woman makes lace,
with a moist-eyed spaniel lying
at her small shapely feet.
Even the maid with the chamber pot
is here; the naughty, red-cheeked girl. . . .
And the merchant’s wife, still
in her yellow dressing gown
at noon, dips her quill into India ink
with an air of cautious pleasure.
Reading Aloud to My Father
I chose the book haphazard
from the shelf, but with Nabokov’s first
sentence I knew it wasn’t the thing
to read to a dying man:
The cra
dle rocks above an abyss, it began,
and common sense tells us that our existence
is but a brief crack of light
between two eternities of darkness.
The words disturbed both of us immediately,
and I stopped. With music it was the same—
Chopin’s Piano Concerto—he asked me
to turn it off. He ceased eating, and drank
little, while the tumors briskly appropriated
what was left of him.
But to return to the cradle rocking. I think
Nabokov had it wrong. This is the abyss.
That’s why babies howl at birth,
and why the dying so often reach
for something only they can apprehend.
At the end they don’t want their hands
to be under the covers, and if you should put
your hand on theirs in a tentative gesture
of solidarity, they’ll pull the hand free;
and you must honor that desire,
and let them pull it free.
Woman, Why Are You Weeping?
The morning after the crucifixion,
Mary Magdalene came to see the body
of Christ. She found the stone
rolled away from an empty tomb. Two
figures dressed in white asked her,
“Woman, why are you weeping?”
“Because,” she replied, “they have
taken away my Lord, and I don’t know
where they have laid him.”
Returned from long travel, I sit
in the familiar, sun-streaked pew, waiting
for the bread and wine of Holy Communion.
The old comfort does not rise in me, only
apathy and bafflement.
India, with her ceaseless