Copper Canyon Press, 1985]Mahler in the Living Room
Low to the ground, the windows are full of lake water.
Leaden, the pure slabs rise straight up into the air
From the summerhouse, where we sit watching them,
Shivering on the threshold of late fall
As the bronze hills in their shabby coats
Arch themselves like hands over a cold radiator —
And Mahler in the living room like an earthquake. Behind the eyes
Sorrow heaves upward, the heavy planks of it gigantic
As armies at a distance, as oak trees, as the tar surface
Of a road giving way to frost, buckling under and over
To the white forces of winter; the underground tears bent
Like ribs cracking, hundreds of paralyzed veins
That are now, suddenly, released, in great silver floods
Powerful as oceans our whole lives rise up
Into a sky full of planets tumbling and shooting,
First lavender, then apricot, then plum-colored:
Hissing like skyrockets they streak
Over the slumberous oars in the depths voluptuously rowing
Velvet as elephants, whose liquid footsteps wallow
About to submerge everything: dock, landing place, lawn . . .
But there are jagged slashes too,
Impertinent brass flourishes, horns that bite air
And bray at each other like gold rifles
Over the little pebbles, the quaint Chinese sparrows
Of the piccolos humorously yammering, trying not to listen
To the huge hesitation waltz beneath them,
The passionate kettledrums rolling
In the throbbing cradle of the gut
Sighing over and over Let Go,
Abandon yourself to the pain, the wild love of it that surges,
Resistless, through everyone's secret bowels
Till the walls almost collapse, our clothes fall from us like leaves
Trembling, helplessly tossed
In an uncontrollable windstorm, the branches weave and sob
As if they would never stop, unbearable the sky,
Unbearable the weight of it, the loss, solitude, suffering,
The hills staring at us blindly,
The house nothing but a shell, the bare floors
Relentless, our eyes welling over with such pain
It is all absolutely uncontainable, in a few minutes
Surely everything will dissolve . . .
When the first duck of a new movement appears
In the middle distance, the bottlegreen oboe bobs
Blue-ringed, graceful, under the little rowboat;
The invisible red feet sturdily paddle
Like webbed spoons in the chill soup of the water
That turns into a flatness now,
The agonized surface lies down
In the glass eyes of the windows,
Those solid transparencies
We orchestrate ourselves
To keep the world framed, at bay
As the great lake of the symphony sways
Far down, far down
The violent sun sets,
Over the wet shingles, the shining flanks of the house
The threadbare arm of the hills sinks,
The wave of feeling rests.
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