Poems by Kate Northrop

怀抱花朵的孩子

Poems by Kate Northrop

Affair With Various Endings
Kate Northrop

I. Kempton, Pennsylvania

Perhaps the last of the light
lifting this evening from the field of wheat

means something. Perhaps the view
includes us, and we are not errors
in the landscape

or meant to be erased. The painter, it’s true,
prefers not to preserve
our figures in the brush

of hills layered into green. Perhaps he too
is careless with the truth. What lies

have you had to tell to land you here

outside Kempton, with the creek rising behind us?
How did the story sound?  If I say your hand
on my thigh, the truck still idles

beneath us, tracks in the frozen road

that months from now will thaw
& heave. If I say your mouth
and the deer begin drifting

across the field, who’s to say
we didn’t call them out—their figures shadowy,

their eyes gem-like and glittering?


II.  Undine

It was all too urgent being human.
You ordered drinks, gestured
with your hands, told stories

and the more I knew

the more I was frightened.  Those evenings
the air came unpinned, got lost
in autumn & dusk, in the leaves

at the edge of the field. And weren’t the edges themselves
vanishing? When you walked to the barn
where the cats had gone in,

taken to rafters. I heard your footsteps
moving the gravel, the ice
in your glass of vodka.

          I listened like that
for the ends of things: the last of the cars, the headlights crossing
our bedroom.  I listened
to your breathing.

          but rooms kept turning in places
I could not ignore. I left because I loved you

without reserve.  Because I would not be allowed

to keep you with me in the world.


III.  “Kings River Canyon”

Because when you read it your voice shakes,
     breaks over the last words,

Because in the Pennsylvania Hospital
at 8th and Spruce, surgeons have split open your chest
and with instruments

are cutting your heart,

and because I wanted to hurt them, because they never
     get older, but return each year

refreshed, blond—

I read the poem, Rexroth walking back through the canyon
where twenty years before he had slept
with his new wife

at the beginning of autumn.
It was her birthday

and they lay there on the hard earth,

the stream running beside
and the walls soaring up

to hold them there. Maybe
he made love to her, the air
chilling the skin

or maybe that was the disease

beginning even then, gathering itself deep
inside her body, considering
the distance between itself

and the surface.
   There was no path.
They’d cut their way into the canyon

where eighteen years later,
a highway’s been blasted through. Eighteen years
he writes ground to pieces.

I am more alone that I ever imagined.

You are dead. And in the mechanical
cool of the classroom
I felt it grip me:

how it will be without you
when I’ll be fifty-five, sixty,

in the beginning of winter, in the first
waves of snow.  I’ll watch the slow drag
of the Schulykill

or I’ll go the garden where we met,
the leaves spinning down
into the empty fountain,

where I will never see you,
not again, not your hands, your face,
or hear aloud the way

you said my name. I’ll turn
and turn again,

but you’ll be gone, nothing filling up your place.



The Dead

Kate Northrop
Their reward is
they become innocent again,

and when they reappear in memory
death has completely erased
the blurs, given them boundaries. They rise

and move through their new world with clean,
clear edges. My grandmother, in particular
has become buoyant, unattached finally

from her histories, from the trappings
of family. By no means was she

a good woman. But the dead don’t care anymore for that.
Weightless, they no longer assume
responsibility, they no longer

have bodies. Once,

at the end of August, after swimming
in the muddy pond

I’d gone into the living room, cool
as vodka, where my grandmother
sat. Greed thins a woman,

I remember her rings, bigger
than her fingers.
                         Water ran down my legs

onto the floor becoming slippery
and my grandmother, her breath
scratchy from cigarettes and blended whiskey,

leaned into my ear and whispered
you’re an ugly girl. Do I have

to forgive her? My mother tells me

no one ever loved her,
so when  I see her, I see her again in the park
in her pink tailored suit, suede pumps,

I see her moving among the strange
gentlemen that have gathered, the dark
powerful men. She is still young, blonde

and most of all, she is beyond reach, beautiful.


The Geranium

Kate Northrop
How can you stand it—looking at things?
     For example, the geranium

out on the patio, the single pink
blossom in the sun? Or stand the sunlight
moving through it,

illuminating, holding the flower open like a high
clear note, an ecstatic
widening

which arrives, arrives. What
do you do with it? While the shrubs and the lowest
overhanging leaves

lift slightly in the wind, the blossom

doesn’t move. It’s the object
of affection, and this is how
it hurts you:

by holding the note open—

Past the front of the apartment, traffic goes by:
one truck, then another

comes on, disappears. And I have

the blossom in my vision—
     sunlight, like vision,
making clear the tiniest

hidden veins. I don’t know why
I should be here, alive

and having to see this, this bright thing
living in time

or have to see it later, at the end
of the afternoon, when the sun’s

lower, its light diagonal across the pot,
     its light then pulling away
across the mossed brick

like a wave, only slower,
slower. The blossom is still pink,
but no longer

brilliant. I’ll go back
into the kitchen. But you, are you stronger than I? Can you
     stay in love with it? Make promises,

marry it? Are you so sure
of your position in the world?

Hiding

Kate Northrop
—to my sister

Because the moon in late October made landmarks glow: the broken
     gate, our yard

full of stones, the attic window

suddenly foreign, across its face
a blue dissolve. In spite of that, the farm

remained an arrangement (barn
behind the house, pond
across the road) and a girl sometimes

feels torn. We turned our dresses inside out,
ran into a grove. We played

you’re blind, Molly, try to find me.
It was a family game: get left

in darkness. I climbed
up into the oak, listened for your voice
until my name became

a sound from the other side, from the poor
order of the world. I came back

because I had to. And believe me, you who are fragile
and so faithful, I hated to return

materializing through trees.


Iowa & Other Accidents

Kate Northrop
There was snow that afternoon covering the road
which twisted toward the secret
of water, the mysterious surge

of sludge & loam, the living
Mississippi, unlike the rest of the Midwest,

drawing itself through landscape. There was an appointment
     you were keeping

in Moline: a cheap hotel, booze, a little blow. On the Lower
     East Side, a woman

spills her martini, makes a gesture
like erasure, or regret. It was almost Christmas.
In the rear view

suddenly, the car you will always describe as oncoming
must have slipped into a skid

and now, rising up over the bank,
it startles you—that reflection. In Moline

the maid corners the bed, straightens the clean
line of sheet. Almost Christmas. On the road,
swirls of snow.  On the road

the car hovering behind you, a witness,
unfortunate & so unlike the audience permitted
the distance of fictions, the artifice

of plot. And worse, of course, the law

of cause & effect: I looked up,
it started to fall.  You must attach

subject to verb, must say
I saw, and did, in your rear view, the car you’d thought
     nothing of,

the gray sedan lifting slowly from the common snow,
turning, and the accident
always there, about to happen.


Late Aubade & Explanation

Kate Northrop
Once in a field, in a wide rising stretch of paintbrush
     & purple vetch, we stuck down

a tent, like punctuation, and drank through the evening
our bottle of bad wine. When you looked up,
the weather was holding: a few breezes,

a full moon silvering the flowers

to white. In the distance, I heard the ache
& slide of snow, the beginning of crickets. It was twilight—

the landscape was lifting.

                    •

               A mountain. The clouds, further up,
came down. A Book of Hours. A tent in which we twisted,
pressed each against the other, drunk

and when I stepped out into the cool
moonlight, there was drifting through the watery
end of the meadow, a deer

pale beneath pines, beneath those soaring
darknessess. Then there was only darkness, the
idea of a deer.

          Remember, I never wanted
to be alive, to have
an outline. Better, I knew, to slip

unheld, an opening into mist.


On The Hotel Balcony
Kate Northrop
—sundown, Miami

They’ve come through the sliding door,
her first,

to share what they’re carrying: wine
and local fruit. He brings a pencil out, a pad of paper
and sketches the oranges,

the open knife. He sketches her feet up over the sea

and watches while she turns
softer, touched by light which turns the leaves
watery orange—

It turns her face

so he sticks to particulars: the long sweep, underside
    of thigh, the hollow

below the ankle, a sharp curve
of bone. Still, she’s looking away at a beach house,

a yellow bicycle. It’s the moment afterward
that’s taken and set them adrift. Each

will go over the ocean

and it’s no matter if the sketch
bears a certain resemblance,

it cannot attach her to the world
nor can he now
say her name quietly enough

to draw her back through interruption,
make her stay.


Unfinished Landscape With A Dog

Kate Northrop
Not much of a dog yet,
     that smudge in the distance, beyond the reach

of focus. It’s just an impressionist
gesture, a guess. From the edge of the clearing, the farmhouse
materializes, settles

into wall & stone. The water,
making the surface

of the stream, makes
reflections. So why shouldn’t the dog

accept limits, become

a figure? Is it like the girl who sits
in the hall closet and says she’s not
hiding? She’s inside—

listening without the burden
of sight, letting locations
release hold. Out of body,
they seem lighter: her parents’ voices no longer

hooked to their mouths. They seem
cleaner. Even the electric can opener;
the sounds of children

that rise from the yard, and fall; the opening
window, these are no longer

effects, things expected
of a subject and verb. The world anyhow is too
straightforward.

Maybe the dog
does not want to be a dog, does not want
to be turned into landscape

but to remain in the beginning, placeless:

with the wind opening, the wind
a vowel, and the stars and waters
that flash, recoil, and retch

unnamed as yet, unformed, unfound.


The Visitor
Kate Northrop
Down the hill, in the field of sweet alfalfa, they’re
     freezing each other, the children

playing tag and I’m up at the house, I’m
in the picture window, thin
and distant like the glimpse

of a surfacing fish. What dark waters
the house is, behind me, settling
into evening. Dusk

and there are, of course, fireflies. Tell me,
what was your name? When you visited once,

by the backroad where the stones glowed pale
in the moonlight, I was too young, I still thought
I belonged to the world. But now

quartered in this house, watching the neighbors’ children
turn to dusk, I feel
I’m ready. Come back

and bring your finest wine, the oldest bottle.
Bring that strange dusty book you were reading.


Female Scarecrow

The skirt flaps in our garden,

         that worn cotton upon which

roses were printed long ago
yet having faded, further back

         than background, are they not
more real than the remembered ones,

         those opening
summers in the hedgerow?--  And still,
         however pale, visible

unlike your mother living in the house

years ago, years even
before you arrived--little tangle

         of worry--already

too late.
And tell me, what is there

to frighten now?  The barn

         sails into evening,
the trees go, the road,
and waves of deer

rise from the woods to the front

of the garden.  They walk
all night, past the figure

that continues--not moving--
but hanging there.




The Neighbor

Now it’s their daughter
laughing with a boy who calls from the window
something precise and obscene

to the two men crossing the empty park,
         carrying large instruments
in dark cases.

Snow hangs over the city, over
         the afternoonand

when one man stops, shifting his weight,
the other looks at the sky.

Then they walk on, past the fountain; they go
         straight through the shadows of trees.  Perhaps
they don’t hear, or aren’t worried by girls; perhaps

they couldn’t care less, but I live here beside her

and I know that laughter made exactly of angles.
         I know her face
and her eyes that are hollow,

smooth as a place where a rock has been.


Slant, and Far Across the Sea

Listen, everyone in a room
wants

a division, a crack at a girl.
Just keep

one eye out;
don’t lean toward windows, don’t drink
greedily like that.

And when you pass through a room, smile
directly, at someone

even if
they seem to be engaged
in conversation--tell me, who’s

completely engaged?--                               
               
                    and the transaction
shall act as an anchor.  Soon you will circle
through turn, through give me

your attention; you will see each face
as something immaculate,

a study of weather
in the distance, a square of rain slanting down

to where it storms across the sea (though there
dark swells are, waves cracking open--).  And if sometime

it surfaces, that particular

memory, the turn
down a gone hallway, or how you shamed yourself

once in somebody’s kitchen (--the sunlight

filtering in) let a secret steady your resolve.  Maintain,
maintain.  To appear

is to escape.


The Place Above the River


The house is empty and girls go in.
They drift through hours in the summer.
Across the river, music begins:

Love, it’s summer.  The closed homes open.
The docks are decked with lights.  But further
the house is empty and girls go in

to light their lovely cigarettes; they listen
closely to the woods.  Leaves?  A slowing car?
Across the river, music begins

where wives are beautiful still, and thin
(in closets their dresses hang, sheer as scarves)
while the house is empty and the girls go in,

shimmering, to swallow vodka, or gin,
which burn, and to lean from where the windows were.
Across the river, music begins

and will part waves of air.  Now.  Then.
The season’s criminal, strict and clear.
The house is empty.  Girls go in.
Across the river, music begins.

Things Are Disappearing Here

Things are disappearing here: a pale light
         spreads over the sea beneath which

X drops, falls back to the blind
         silences, to the undeveloped

secret fish which have been abandoned there
         and grow vicious.
And things are disappearing

also in the country.  Already the roads
twist into the distance, rise
         into columns of smoke

and in the parking lots of a discount store,
         a sedan explodes.  Then it happens that our fathers
sail off, a whole flotilla fills the sky,

their jackets and ties flapping

like the pages of books the never read.  Our fathers
         are disappearing yet they are not

ashamed.  All things go: at the edge of the city, dogs run off,
they tear themselves from their lines

and in the middle of the night,
from neighborhoods more trenchant than ours, we hear their barks,
those clear openings that come to us

over the schoolyard, the homes boarded up, and then
         in through windows.  The sound of the missing dogs

for a while survives, and that is just enough
to cheer us.


Sunset City

Say the empties go out.
A girl in the window wavers.

Say the old dog rattles
attached to the back of the yard, and here comes
the holy ice-cream truck,         

              that rhyme & cling paused
where children spin.  And say, the empties

gone out (you’ve rinsed the bottles, the mouth
         of each bottle) and the girl’s

turned in a window beyond which the dog, that pile of bones,

keeps rattling, say the light of the streetlamp
pools over the names, again         

           etched in cement--Brianne, Amber--and how quiet

it gets.  Sunday in the city.  The man at the corner
         locks the shop grate.

Down the street goes his car, goes
the echo of his music
         and up comes the bus, local

in the evening, turning toward 10th, the windows

filthy, streaked where you see yourself
         barely but there
drawing away in the gloaming.

The Film

Come, let’s go in.
The ticket-taker
has shyly grinned
and it’s almost time,
Lovely One.
Let’s go in.

The wind tonight’s too wild.
The sky too deep,
too thin.  Already it’s time.
The lights have dimmed.
Come, Loveliest.
Let’s go in

and know these bodies
we do not have to own, passing
quietly as dreams, as snow.
Already leaves are falling
and music begins.
Lovely One,

It’s time.
Let’s go in.

[ 本帖最后由 怀抱花朵的孩子 于 2007-9-16 12:23 AM 编辑 ]