Mary in Old Age
. . .
IV
Of Others Who Were There
There was: the old lady in the nursing home
Who kept coming up to me and standing much too close
To me, sniffing at my body or my soul
As if it were something deliciously stinking,
Thrilling to her, or else a flowering bush,
Nourishment for a ravenous questioning;
Staring into my ear the way the child
In the comic routine long ago in the movies
Stared silently into the coils of the ear
Of the man sitting there next to the child,
Trying to watch the movie on the screen,
Driven wild inside by the child's relentless gaze:
As if the ear could speak its secrets back.
Of No Country I Know: New and Selected Poems and Translations (Phoenix Poets Series)
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