Portia’s Complaint
I.
Looking through the window
at the boys walking home,
she magically could call the daylight
back, remembered climes and sound.
It’s winter now. (I know her mind.)
Feel this: the icicles that will not
melt. Remember then this time.
Lay your fingers on her chair. She
cannot age. In this, she cannot be.
That icicle divides the boys
from that old time when some
believed she had the right to rule.
Try to touch her through the icy glass.
Remember time. Break in and
run your fingers in her frost.
One winter’s day, you had a
friend, not her (her role was then
to teach). You ask for warmth.
Go back: decide. Hear the stories
made for ears that now
no longer hear.
II.
Think only sound. Don’t look outside
the frost or glass today. Only hear.
In her snow, the children have their day.
You would not hurt. They freeze,
made into ice. Hear their icy fingers
crack. Close your eyes, imagining
their heads now make the sound of glass.
Remember time. Hear them shout, and let
that part be in your mind. The dogs can’t
bark, and icicles reclaim the world.
The mothers search and cannot find.
The fathers search and cannot find.
The family is a thing we all forget.
And then we know the word
because of sound. We do not see.
The children cannot slide along
the snow. Listen to the fingers
crack. The cracking only
says you can.
III.
I cannot reason what she wants.
As if to hear it said would make it care.
We grant that she is clever and denotes
herself as capable and kind. We recall
her sitting in a lounge chair late in June,
waiting for the sound. She was a fascination
to her child. Her husband liked her, too.
Now she feels herself along, waiting
for the time. But what will matter if
it’s not the thing she was?
Smiles never tell you what you need
to know. We come to her because of
ease, the way our shoulders languish
next to hers. Since people didn’t seem
to come again, or want to come,
she manufactured how she felt, with toys.
IV.
This one thought clothes make the man.
Just one day the mirror showed
him what he was and liked. Looking out
the window all he saw was overcast.
He watched the animals outside his bedroom.
In his mind, he ran across the snow
like squirrels and cats he saw.
Squirrels, he knew, can tell what’s
deeply underneath the snow.
Just one day he saw him, too, the way he was.
The sky was overcast. No one saw,
guessing what he saw. He saw the dark, black
snow, but in his mind, he looked into the mirror
and found the parts to hide.
Thus the world was right:
clothes really make the man.
V.
Trying to be solemn, to elevate the
self into a Christian mind,
where each one counts, and,
knowing just the same, "respects"
the selves of others. What a
dream! How to be a sparrow in the
snow! — the snow as white as every
church he’d ever known. Conflict over all:
Armageddon as an angry name. How good
it might have been to be the goodly man,
the father of us all.
How good it might have been to be
the one his child might want.
Or so he saw.
As for the child himself,
he’s doing fine.
I.
Looking through the window
at the boys walking home,
she magically could call the daylight
back, remembered climes and sound.
It’s winter now. (I know her mind.)
Feel this: the icicles that will not
melt. Remember then this time.
Lay your fingers on her chair. She
cannot age. In this, she cannot be.
That icicle divides the boys
from that old time when some
believed she had the right to rule.
Try to touch her through the icy glass.
Remember time. Break in and
run your fingers in her frost.
One winter’s day, you had a
friend, not her (her role was then
to teach). You ask for warmth.
Go back: decide. Hear the stories
made for ears that now
no longer hear.
II.
Think only sound. Don’t look outside
the frost or glass today. Only hear.
In her snow, the children have their day.
You would not hurt. They freeze,
made into ice. Hear their icy fingers
crack. Close your eyes, imagining
their heads now make the sound of glass.
Remember time. Hear them shout, and let
that part be in your mind. The dogs can’t
bark, and icicles reclaim the world.
The mothers search and cannot find.
The fathers search and cannot find.
The family is a thing we all forget.
And then we know the word
because of sound. We do not see.
The children cannot slide along
the snow. Listen to the fingers
crack. The cracking only
says you can.
III.
I cannot reason what she wants.
As if to hear it said would make it care.
We grant that she is clever and denotes
herself as capable and kind. We recall
her sitting in a lounge chair late in June,
waiting for the sound. She was a fascination
to her child. Her husband liked her, too.
Now she feels herself along, waiting
for the time. But what will matter if
it’s not the thing she was?
Smiles never tell you what you need
to know. We come to her because of
ease, the way our shoulders languish
next to hers. Since people didn’t seem
to come again, or want to come,
she manufactured how she felt, with toys.
IV.
This one thought clothes make the man.
Just one day the mirror showed
him what he was and liked. Looking out
the window all he saw was overcast.
He watched the animals outside his bedroom.
In his mind, he ran across the snow
like squirrels and cats he saw.
Squirrels, he knew, can tell what’s
deeply underneath the snow.
Just one day he saw him, too, the way he was.
The sky was overcast. No one saw,
guessing what he saw. He saw the dark, black
snow, but in his mind, he looked into the mirror
and found the parts to hide.
Thus the world was right:
clothes really make the man.
V.
Trying to be solemn, to elevate the
self into a Christian mind,
where each one counts, and,
knowing just the same, "respects"
the selves of others. What a
dream! How to be a sparrow in the
snow! — the snow as white as every
church he’d ever known. Conflict over all:
Armageddon as an angry name. How good
it might have been to be the goodly man,
the father of us all.
How good it might have been to be
the one his child might want.
Or so he saw.
As for the child himself,
he’s doing fine.
