Two Poems

  THE WILD WOMAN Ein Mägdlein kam tin Abendglanz, Wie ich’s noch me gefunden.  {A maiden came in Evening’s glow, Such as I ne’er have met.} —Schrieber Everyone dies trying to tame her. I have died twice, losing the contours of wild form, painting my meaning over almond trees, breasts from leaves, pulling hair—raven feathers into Andromeda. Oh, I tried to make her maiden of my home. I gave her linens, powder, shoes—I shared my supper, but, no—her doe eyes fixed on trees and when I turned to look, she fled. I called her names of autumn. I gave words meaning where the bleak woods bled— squirrels for food and violets on the table. But her heart was stone. Her legs fought to run. She never even saw my gifts— only the limbs, the dispersed birds off to winter roost, off to be what they become. How I tried to carve her into me— no cotton, silk was spun. No lady—only fields dreaming into form. I laid her down—a crooked spell, and listened to her hallow wake, the long exhalation of order. Between us, nothing grew. I spoke, yes, but she could only hear the brook and tangle, the dark humus walk of creatures who would know her name. Great distances I went— half-mad for her.  I wanted her held, a roost in my wounds—a grave dream I could not forget— A man on his way to death cannot stop. Lilith of the hunt— I knew her as the fire, the receptive wood— and how she longed to be stone rolled in front of tombs, holding back the bodies of men with hunger she could never feed.   HOME The house was the horse was the running Inside I was a teenager never to grow Inside I was the spoon and the mannish moon swooning over the sun, handing black-eyed susans to the blind moles, busily tearing rooms from earth The house was my birth It ached to push me from chimney It pinned me with windows, nails and boards keeping us, the family, inside its rooms— growing us like mould—eating our secret thoughts in cisterns of sickness, cluttered and boxed Family—how did I survive when you did not— your bursts and cries pained on old boards your smiles and facades, collapsed porch sagging I stand outside—your dream, not mine Youth has changed—know I am outside of you the horse the running