Margaret Atwood
1.
A clean page: what
shines in you is not nothing,
though equally clear & blue
and I’m old enough to know
I ought to give up wanting
to touch that shining.
What shines anyway?
Stars, cut glass, and water,
and you in your serene blue shirt
Standing beside a window
while it rains, nothing
much going on, intangible.
***
To put your hand
into the light reveals
the hand but the light also:
shining is where they touch.
Other things made of light:
hallucinations & angels.
If I reach my hands
into you, will you vanish?
2.
FREE FALL
is falling but at least it’s
free. I don’t even know
whether I jumped or was pushed,
but it hardly matters now
I’m up here. No wings
or net but for an instant
anyway there’s a great
view: the sea,
a line of surf, brown cliffs
tufted with scrub, your upturned
face a white zero.
I wish I knew
whether you’ll catch or watch.
4.
Towards my chill house in this sloppy weather,
hands on the cold wheel, hoping there’ll be a fire;
slush on the grass, past an accident,
then another. Somewhere there’s one more,
mine. In a minuet we just
miss each other, in an accident
we don’t. Dance is intentional but
did you miss me or
not, was it too close
to the bone for you, was that
pain, am I gone? Nothing’s
broken, nevertheless I’m skinless,
the gentlest touch would gut me.
Slowly, slowly, nobody wants a mess.
I float over the black roads, pure ice.
5.
No way clear,
I write on the lines across this yellow
paper. Poetry. It’s details
like this that drag
at me, and the nasty little bells
on the corners I pass on my way
to meet you: singing of hunger,
darkness & poverty.
8.
You think I live in a glass tower
where the phone doesn’t ring
and nobody eats? But it does, they do
and leave the crumbs & greasy knives.
If the front room dogsmells
filter through the door
dirty fur coats & the insides
of carnivore throats. Neglect
& disarray, cold ashes drift
from the woodstove onto the floor.
Cats with their melting spines festoon
themselves in every empty
corner. Who’s fed them? Who knows?
What I want you to see
is the banality of all this, even
while I write the doorbell
pounds down there, constant assaults
of the radio, one more
blameless crushed face, another
pair of boots drips in the hall.
There’s no mystery, I want to tell
you, none at all, no more
than in anything else. What I do
is ordinary, no
surprise, like you
no trickier than sunrise.
10.
Of course I’m a teller
of mundane lies, such as: I’ll try
never to lie to you. Such as:
that day after today the earth will
tilt on its axis towards the sun
again, the light will turn stronger,
it will be spring and you’ll
be happy. Such as:
I can fly. I wish I could believe
it. Instead I’m stuck
here, in this waste of particulars,
truths, facts. Teeth, gloves & socks.
I don’t trust love
because it’s no shape or colour.
13.
I’m in your hands, you say, meaning
something quite different: a way
of passing choice. Nevertheless
you’re what I got handed,
not wanting it, like those cards
printed with the finger alphabet
the deaf & dumb nail you with in the bus
stations. An embarrassment, but more
than that: some object
made of glass, lucid & simple
and without a name or known
function. I can learn you
by touch & guesswork
or not. Meanwhile I hold you
in my hands, true, wondering what
to make of you and what you’ll make
of me. A gesture
of the hands, clear
as water. The letter A.
Selections from “Small Poems for the Winter Solstice” by Margaret Atwood
A clean page: what
shines in you is not nothing,
though equally clear & blue
and I’m old enough to know
I ought to give up wanting
to touch that shining.
What shines anyway?
Stars, cut glass, and water,
and you in your serene blue shirt
Standing beside a window
while it rains, nothing
much going on, intangible.
***
To put your hand
into the light reveals
the hand but the light also:
shining is where they touch.
Other things made of light:
hallucinations & angels.
If I reach my hands
into you, will you vanish?
2.
FREE FALL
is falling but at least it’s
free. I don’t even know
whether I jumped or was pushed,
but it hardly matters now
I’m up here. No wings
or net but for an instant
anyway there’s a great
view: the sea,
a line of surf, brown cliffs
tufted with scrub, your upturned
face a white zero.
I wish I knew
whether you’ll catch or watch.
4.
Towards my chill house in this sloppy weather,
hands on the cold wheel, hoping there’ll be a fire;
slush on the grass, past an accident,
then another. Somewhere there’s one more,
mine. In a minuet we just
miss each other, in an accident
we don’t. Dance is intentional but
did you miss me or
not, was it too close
to the bone for you, was that
pain, am I gone? Nothing’s
broken, nevertheless I’m skinless,
the gentlest touch would gut me.
Slowly, slowly, nobody wants a mess.
I float over the black roads, pure ice.
5.
No way clear,
I write on the lines across this yellow
paper. Poetry. It’s details
like this that drag
at me, and the nasty little bells
on the corners I pass on my way
to meet you: singing of hunger,
darkness & poverty.
8.
You think I live in a glass tower
where the phone doesn’t ring
and nobody eats? But it does, they do
and leave the crumbs & greasy knives.
If the front room dogsmells
filter through the door
dirty fur coats & the insides
of carnivore throats. Neglect
& disarray, cold ashes drift
from the woodstove onto the floor.
Cats with their melting spines festoon
themselves in every empty
corner. Who’s fed them? Who knows?
What I want you to see
is the banality of all this, even
while I write the doorbell
pounds down there, constant assaults
of the radio, one more
blameless crushed face, another
pair of boots drips in the hall.
There’s no mystery, I want to tell
you, none at all, no more
than in anything else. What I do
is ordinary, no
surprise, like you
no trickier than sunrise.
10.
Of course I’m a teller
of mundane lies, such as: I’ll try
never to lie to you. Such as:
that day after today the earth will
tilt on its axis towards the sun
again, the light will turn stronger,
it will be spring and you’ll
be happy. Such as:
I can fly. I wish I could believe
it. Instead I’m stuck
here, in this waste of particulars,
truths, facts. Teeth, gloves & socks.
I don’t trust love
because it’s no shape or colour.
13.
I’m in your hands, you say, meaning
something quite different: a way
of passing choice. Nevertheless
you’re what I got handed,
not wanting it, like those cards
printed with the finger alphabet
the deaf & dumb nail you with in the bus
stations. An embarrassment, but more
than that: some object
made of glass, lucid & simple
and without a name or known
function. I can learn you
by touch & guesswork
or not. Meanwhile I hold you
in my hands, true, wondering what
to make of you and what you’ll make
of me. A gesture
of the hands, clear
as water. The letter A.
Selections from “Small Poems for the Winter Solstice” by Margaret Atwood
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