Marie Howe

Postscript


What we did to the earth, we did to our daughters
one after the other.

What we did to the trees, we did to our elders
stacked in their wheelchairs by the lunchroom door.

What we did to our daughters, we did to our sons
calling out for their mothers.

What we did to the trees, what we did to the earth
we did to our sons, to our daughters.

What we did to the cow, to the pig, to the lamb,
we did to the earth, butchered and milked it.

Few of us knew what the bird calls meant
or what the fires were saying.

We took of earth and took and took, and the earth
seemed not to mind,

until one of our daughters shouted: It was right
in front of you, right in front of your eyes

and you didn’t see.
The air turned red. The ocean grew teeth.


*


What the Living Do


Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living room windows because the heat’s on too high in here, and I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it. Parking.
Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:
I am living, I remember you.


*


Magdalene Afterwards


Remember the woman in the blue burka forced to kneel in the stadium
then shot in the head?  That was me.
And I was the woman who secretly filmed it.

I was burned as a witch by the people in my own town
I was sent to the asylum at 16.
I was walking with my younger sister, looking for firewood,
when we saw the group of men approaching.

I’m the woman so in love with my husband
sometimes I wait in the kitchen chair and stare at the door.

I’m bored at the business meeting,
impatient with the Do Not Walk sign.

I’m parked in my wheelchair with the others in the hallway
—three hours till lunch, I don’t remember who it is
who leans down to kiss me.

I’ve forgotten my keys, dropped the dish, fallen down
the icy stoop.

I’m sitting on the bench with my bags, waiting for the bus.
I’m the woman in the black suit hailing a taxi.
I’m in prayer, in meditation, I’ve shaved my head, I wear robes
now instead of dresses.

I’ve entered the classroom and all the children call out my name at once.
I’m talking on my cell phone while driving.
I’m walking the goats out to the far field, gazing at the mountain
I’ve looked at every day of my life.

I never had children,
I bore nine living children and two dead ones
I adopted a girl in my late middle age
I’m cooking rice and beans
cooking dal
cooking lamb
reheating pizza
lighting the candles on the birthday cake
standing quietly by the window
still hungry for I don’t know what.

I want to see through the red bricks of the building across the street,
into the something else that almost gleams through the day.

Often, I’m lonely.
Sometimes a joy pours through me so immense.


*


One Day


One day the patterned carpet, the folding chairs,
the woman in the blue suit by the door examining her split ends,

all of it will go on without me. I’ll have disappeared,
as easily as a coin under lake water, and few to notice the difference

—a coin dropping into the darkening—
and West 4th Street, the sesame noodles that taste like
too much peanut butter lowered into the small white paper carton
—all of it will go on and on
and the I that caused me so much trouble? Nowhere

or grit thrown into the garden
or into the sticky bodies of several worms,
or just gone, stopped—like the Middle Ages,
like the coin Whitman carried in his pocket all the way to that basement

bar on Broadway that isn’t there any more.
Oh to be in Whitman’s pocket, on a cold winter day,

to feel his large warm hand slide in and out, and in again.
To be taken hold of by Walt Whitman! To be exchanged!

To be spent for something somebody wanted and drank and found delicious.
 


 

New Poems (2023)
    13     Prologue
    15     Postscript
    16     Practicing
    18     The Saw, The Drill
    19     Reincarnation
    21     Another Theory of Time
    22     Persephone
    23     Persephone, in the meadow
    24     Persephone and Demeter
    25     Advent
    26     What the Earth Seemed to Say, 2020
    28     The Letter, 1968
    29     The Forest
    30     The Maples
    31     Jack and the Moon
    32     Before
    33     Seventy
    34     The Willows
    35     Hymn
    37     The Singularity

from The Good Thief (1987)
    41     Part of Eve’s Discussion
    42     Death, the Last Visit
    43     What the Angels Left
    45     The Meadow
    47     The Split
    50     What Belongs to Us
    52     Gretel, from a sudden clearing
    55     Keeping Still
    56     Without Devotion
    58     Sorrow
    59     Mary’s Argument
    60     Encounter

from What the Living Do (1997)
    65     The Boy
    66     Sixth Grade
    68     Buying the Baby
    70     Practicing
    71     The Attic
    73     The Copper Beech
    74     The Game
    76     The Girl
    77     The Dream
    78     For Three Days
    80     Just Now
    81     A Certain Light
    83     How Some of It Happened
    85     The Last Time
    86     The Promise
    87     The Cold Outside
    88     The Grave
    90     The Gate
    91     One of the Last Days
    92     Late Morning
    93     Watching Television
    95     Separation
    96     Prayer
    98     Reunion
    99     The Kiss
    101     My Dead Friends
    102     What the Living Do
    104     Buddy

from The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (2008)
    107     The Star Market
    108     Reading Ovid
    110     After the Movie
    112     Limbo
    113     Easter
    114     Marriage
    115     Prayer
    116     Courage
    117     Why the Novel Is Necessary but Sometimes Hard to Read
    119     Government
    120     Poems from The Life of Mary
    120         Sometimes the moon
    121         Once or twice or three times
    122         How you can’t move moonlight
    123         You think this happened only once?
    124         Annunciation
    125     My Mother’s Body
    126     Before the Fire
    127     Fifty
    128     Hurry
    129     The Spell
    131     The Snow Storm
    132     Mary (Reprise)

from Magdalene (2017)
    135     Before the Beginning
    136     Magdalene—The Seven Devils
    139     On Men, Their Bodies
    140     How the Story Started
    141     Thorns
    142     The Affliction
    144     Magdalene: The Addict
    145     The Landing
    146     The Teacher
    147     The Disciples
    148     Magdalene on Gethsemane
    149     Calvary
    150     Low Tide, Late August
    151     The Adoption: When the Girl Arrived
    152     Conversation: Dualism
    153     The News
    155     Walking Home
    156     The Map
    157     Waiting at the River
    158     Christmas Eve
    159     Two Animals
    160     The Teacher
    161     Fourteen
    162     Adaptation
    164     October
    165     Delivery
    166     Magdalene at the Theopoetics Conference
    167     One Day
    168     Magdalene Afterwards

    171     Acknowledgements

    172     Index of Titles and First Lines