Beyond This Dark House Read online

After The Ball

  The dancing over,

  masks long since discarded,

  woman curved in sleeping

  disarray upon the bed,

  he shrugs into a dressing gown

  and walks out on the balcony.

  The city, in its own disarray,

  is also sleeping. He hears

  a single car around the corner

  and then, surprisingly, the clip-

  clop of a ridden horse.

  It should be dawn, he thinks,

  by now it should be dawn.

  The sky, however, shows

  no sign of lightening.

  The stars still shine.

  He smiles, amused:

  it should be dawn

  but equally, he thinks,

  he should know the name

  of the woman in his bed

  and he does not.

  A light breeze lifts the leaves

  of the oaks below. He gathers

  the robe more closely about himself,

  enjoying the feel of it

  against his skin. The robe

  is navy blue with silver trim.

  Nicolette. Her name is Nicolette.

  The horse comes back

  along the boulevard:

  a chestnut ridden by a man in grey.

  He hears from below the voices

  of two young girls walking past.

  His head turns reflexively

  to follow them up the hill:

  a meaningless motion of desire

  like a roulette wheel

  after the ball has dropped.

  PART

  THREE

  Guinevere at Almesbury

  The hooded ladies here are wonderfully kind.

  They have been gentle since the day

  I first arrived, and even more so since the night

  a messenger came riding through the rain

  to say the king was dead.

  They brought me shears and watched

  in silence as I destroyed my hair.

  A circling hawk cried once and flew away

  into the trees. Will anyone believe

  in days to come how much I loved my husband?

  I sat awake that night beneath

  the dripping leaves, then under the quiet stars

  that came out after the rain moved on.

  The garden here has mild-hued flowers

  and large-leafed trees for shade.

  In the morning and at dusk songbirds

  send sweet music through the air.

  I am learning how to live without desire.

  When Lancelot came here from France

  to be the hunting hawk to Arthur’s hand

  I watched myself falling into love

  and lay down at night hiding it.

  I learned. I laid a naked sword

  along my mind to bar him from my centre,

  smiling with all proper courtesy

  upon him, as on every man at court

  until we were caused to be once

  alone. I was made to see his own mask

  crumble, baring the brilliant pain behind.

  I could not hide from that.

  There was no place to hide.

  I was brought into another life

  and began to live with grief,

  for Arthur knew. He knew me as he knew

  each single star that swung about like

  pointers to his north. I heard the silence

  of his soul beside me in the dark

  and his forbearance broke

  my heart, for I loved him.

  Will anyone believe, in days to come,

  how much? I loved them both.

  For my hair, now cropped and ragged,

  all that bright aspiring

  was sundered and sent to war.

  I am learning how to live with this.

  I thought of dying more than once.

  The last time, the night that Arthur died.

  Not since. We cannot be other than

  we are. I loved two men. A kingdom

  broke for it. Something fell that was a star.

  We cannot be other than we are.

  I never dream of one of them alone.

  I see them on a forest path,

  riding together. Dappled, autumn

  leaves, a slanting sun just risen.

  Or in battle side by side

  with bloodied swords,

  in the hard north. Or talking

  a winter night away beside a fire

  in a kingdom that has not fallen.

  In those dreams I was never in Camelot.

  That pain is worst of all.

  Those images wake me, shivering,

  needing comfort, knowing there is none,

  except for this: they are not true.

  Dreams are not always true.

  It was for me, it was for me,

  it was for love of me that Camelot

  became what once it was.

  Lacking Guinevere, there is nothing there.

  And what I let make, I let destroy.

  I will die someday. I loved them both.

  At The Root of Her Tree

  The people of my village

  await your next coming.

  They perform songs

  and complex dances

  to commemorate visitations

  and implore a swift return.

  The last time, you appeared to us

  in the shape of a soft-winged bird

  that sang a summer

  in the wood beyond our houses.

  The time before that

  you came as a woman.

  You gave yourself in love

  to my father and bore him

  a child in midwinter.

  You named your son

  and were gone

  in the morning.

  So I have been told.

  I grew up without you.

  Changeling, talisman:

  guarded with care,

  loved and feared.

  I was never allowed

  to fight in our wars.

  Women, ever since I can remember,

  would bring their warriors’ weapons

  and their newborn children

  for me to touch. Later, they began

  to come for themselves.

  One night in that summer

  when my mother

  came to us as a bird,

  I went into the forest.

  The night was mild.

  A sky spilled with stars

  hung above me. One fell

  to the world, somewhere.

  Moving under grey-green leaves

  I came to where my mother

  was still singing. I saw her

  on the branch of a moonlit tree.

  Her wings were silver in the light.

  Her head was tilted back. Her voice

  soared above the forest,

  the tilled and fallow fields,

  all the curvature of earth.

  In that creature

  of uncompromising joy

  what thought could there be

  for a human child

  begotten one green year

  for who knows why?

  I listened for a woven time,

  and then lay down

  at the root of her tree to sleep.

  In the morning I went

  back into the village

  and learned that a woman

  had borne my child in the night.

  I came to the place where she was

  and took the infant in my arms,

  carefully. I held it close

  to my beating heart and,

  bending my stiff head down slowly,

  let its triumphant crying

  drown the singing of my mother

  in the deep, surrounding woods.

  Goddess

  You, love, are of the sea.

  Your unfathomed tides coil

&nbs
p; through circled mysteries to hold

  those who always were to come.

  To you, love, we carry the sun.

  Suspensions of laughter we give you,

  moons over summer-still waters,

  and the whispers that consecrate shadow,

  turning away from the living

  with inadequate words

  as offerings in our arms.

  Will you not show yourself?

  Over the blurred edges of dreams

  cried by carried need you,

  ravagingly distant, shimmer,

  re-opening the unhealed wound.

  Words unspoken linger

  longer than the spoken

  in the unwhole heart.

  You, love, are ocean cruel

  knowing (you knowing) that once

  having almost seen your face

  or half-heard a half-promising voice

  in what is unlocked between seconds,

  we are star lost and sun lost,

  consumed by a wanting

  of more than chimeras,

  helplessly sculpted by you.

  Being Orpheus

  What else could he have done?

  Her steps were silent on the stone.

  He could not speak or turn, he could not

  Turn. Could not see if silence

  Wrapped her rising with him.

  The road shrank upwards; light was far away.

  Somewhere below, two figures watched in shadow.

  But were they watching two ascend, or one?

  Were those her footsteps that he could not hear?

  Behind him was a god who never stained himself

  With mercy. Light was a long way off.

  What would he do if in the end

  He turned under the sun and was alone?

  And somewhere then, behind all mysteries,

  Where magic had its source, where

  Sorcery was woven and the gods were born,

  A song began. A song of mourning and lament,

  Of sorrow not assuaged in all the years

  That, following, towered into time.

  Being Orpheus. A song of loss to break

  The hearts of beasts, to break the grip

  Of earth on stone, to bend the starlight

  Streaming to the world.

  Light was so far ahead it was a prayer,

  And the only god who mattered was behind.

  He could not speak. Silence was the law

  Through his contracting universe.

  But still there grew a music,

  Spinning itself down within his making,

  In places where he did not know he was.

  A lament that was crying for a sorrow yet unborn,

  Sorrow that might not be unless he turned.

  And yet the rocks would break, the trees.

  The silence was a weight upon his life.

  He could not speak to curse but

  Knew he had no curse to speak

  For he had won. Had turned his eyes

  Without and walked a world to ending

  To stand before a god and sing her back

  To life. Being Orpheus. He could not

  Love her more. Had followed, living,

  Into ways where life was not.

  He could not love her more.

  The silence was a weight upon all life.

  If he could reach back for her hand,

  Back to touch her robe, a strand of hair,

  If he could know.

  And somewhere now there was a song.

  With words of loss to gather even Sirens

  Into stillness and the harrowing of grief,

  And a music that had never been before.

  A music that had never been before.

  Somewhere, twice, the phoenix tried to scream.

  There was an agony of silence, a plague.

  We turned. There was light. I saw her eyes.

  And what choice had been his?

  Or ours, who followed after?

  None of us could reach behind ourselves,

  And when the breaking light came blindingly

  How could we not turn, for whom

  The sacrifice had long ago been made?

  Sacrificed and having sacrificed,

  we came into what appeared to be sunshine.

  There seemed to be a clearing, trees and rocks.

  There was a lyre. And somehow our hands moved,

  or seemed to move, and then we sang.

  Because there once had been

  a song of grief, of mourning and lament,

  of sorrow not assuaged in all the years

  that, following, towered into time.

  Because there once had been

  a music that had never been before.

  What else could we have done? Once being Orpheus.

  This Falling Tower

  ‘To see things clear, if even through your tears, to

  recognize, notice, observe—and have to put it all

  down with a smile at the very moment when hands are

  clinging and lips meeting, and the human gaze is

  blinded with feeling . . .’

  —Thomas Mann

  Your love goes in silver under the moon.

  She robes herself in gold beneath the sun.

  When she moves through darkness, she gathers

  about herself a blackness of the first night.

  She whirls within the room, turning about the floor,

  her hair spinning into circles. You know this music.

  But watching from the balcony

  you are frozen into stillness,

  while images shiver through you into life.

  Chandeliers are dancing on the glass,

  your love is wrapped in scintillating hues,

  the room is turning, she is turning, you

  are motionless and cold, and line

  by line you draw them to a stop.

  In that porcelain tableau the whiteness of her

  skin springs outward like starlight. They stand.

  Details record themselves. Time passes,

  does not seem to pass. You feel your pulse return

  to seek the music in the room. Light moves,

  as you step inside and take her hand.

  And take her hand and think, and always think,

  of porcelain and chandeliers, of stars

  and wind and the night before the sun.

  You dance. The obligatory distance

  breaks your heart. You love this woman,

  dance with her across a ballroom floor,

  she whispers in your ear, glittering.

  But even now you can turn to the window

  and watch yourself watching both of you.

  On that balcony, outside the splendour

  of the spinning room, someone

  with your name can almost smile,

  and someday in a room that is waiting now

  you will work with words to build a falling tower.

  Your love has eyes in which a soul can drown,

  or be revived. Write it down.

  This Truth

  Nothing compares.

  Though we be

  bound backwards

  across the spinning

  wheel, though our

  stone words

  never ascend

  the slope to you,

  and though

  your face

  is never shown

  clearly to us,

  dreaming or awake—

  though this truth

  be bitter truth,

  nothing compares

  to almost you.

  Medea

  I wanted the man who came on the blood ship.

  They came for the treasure of my father.

  (Not I.) I stole it for them

  and sailed away on that ship.

  At sea, with the black wine unstopped,

  I unbound my hair and wrapped

 
; my legs about him as he drove,

  breaking what I was. My blood was on

  his cloak. Triumph sang, sang.

  After that we were every night together,

  sliding past lands familiar as stars

  to them, but strange as love to me.

  He taught me to do the things

  he needed to have done.

  When my father’s fleet in swift pursuit

  appeared behind us like a stain at sea,

  racing to regain his golden treasure

  (Not I. My hair is dark, dark.),

  it was easy to think of the death of

  my brother, Apsyrtos, whom we had

  carried off with us, and certain things

  followed upon that. The pieces

  of his body flecked the choppy sea

  until my father stopped to harvest them.

  And so he let us go: the fleece on the mast, and I.

  I watched their drooping sails shrink behind.

  Jason watched the birds feed on the waves,

  standing straight as a man, stiffly apart from me.

  He slept alone that night and so I slept alone.

  Later we were wed, blessed with children.

  But I should not have been left by myself

  that night to learn the things I learned.

  Various Things

  I am the child of a full eclipse.

  When I was born the sun

  was blocked by the moon.

  I have a propensity for alleyways.

  The women I have allowed myself

  to love have been uniformly dark.

  One night a girl asked me to hurt her.

  Later, I went down into the street.

  Long before dawn. The city very cold.

  No moon. Stars hard and far. A solitary

  drunk approached me, singing

  to himself. I let him pass.

  I have never kept a job

  for more than half a year.

  Various things. I am not

  particularly responsible.

  Now that winter is coming

  I am more content than at other times.

  In summer I would not have let him go.

  Hades and Kore

  I have stolen maidens from their mothers’ sides.

  The brutal rose I wear in my lapel

  has petals that do not fade. Young girls

  have seen my walk and followed me away

  from their annihilating lives,

  the rag dolls they have scarcely left behind

  slumped forebodingly in brightly empty rooms,

  as bodies that once cradled them were opened.

  I have lingered over cigarettes,

  taken girls telling me their fantasies

  in twilit motel rooms creased by neon

  urgencies, on the ragged edges

  of whatever grainbelt town or city