Les arbres derrière eux fumaient
encore; de leurs branches noirçies,
des carcasses de singes à demi
brulées tombaient de temps à autre
au milieu des plats.

— Gustave Flaubert [Salammbô]

Outside of truth there is no poetry.

— Onitsura

A WOMAN, 1899

Behind the leafless elms,
their branches knotty with rooks' nests,
the sky is the downy purple
of dried rose petals. He strikes
a match, holds it to the wick of the lamp,
and closes the cut-glass lens.
He pats the horse's damp rump
and hoists himself into the seat
beside me. Reaching for the reins,
his fingers close over my gloved hand.
Will you mind, he asks, if
I smoke my pipe? His face is bright
in the cupped flame, his lips
moist on the pipe-stem, his mustache
like a gold-masked god's.
A fox barks. The night
is suddenly darker.

When I raised the thimble glass
and touched the cordial
with the tip of my tongue,
waves surged under the floorboards
and the rain broke on the window
with the voracious crying
of herring-gulls. That this
was indeed love-unto-death
the weight in my womb told me.

At the finale, when I
became the undone queen shipwrecked
on the cadaver of her blond lover—
the two of us forever
exiled in our strange lands—
my husband appraised the orchestration
with an educated ear and was
well pleased. His was a goodness
I had not deserved.

My nightdress is rough
and cold. Sleeping beside me
like a piece of wood, he smells of tobacco
and barber's cologne. I hold
my breath, fix my eyes on the stars,
and hope for the fox to bark

A MAN, 1901

Her smallness of bosom and
sharpness of hip-bone had ceased
to bother me. Not so her way—
in the last moments—of gasping
and ending with a lip-biting
yelp. Was this the paradox
that had kept me faithful?
This hint that—despite the straight
lacing of her conversation, despite
the unimpeachable tendresse
of her smile, despite
the reminder of lavender sachets
in her folded clothing—she was
in those moments a bitch in heat?
A putain at heart? Her eyes,
when she opened them,
were always calm and kind,
just as they ought to be.
So, I would never know.

I am spending my siesta seated
on the esplanade. Le Figaro
and the week-old Times lie
folded in my lap. Below the brim
of my panama the brassy white
of the sands is patterned
with the blurred silhouettes
of nursemaids and governesses
and their tousled charges. An Arab
offers oranges; a peasant, donkey-rides.
No doubt the femme-de-chambre
has provided the requested vase,
and Madame has arranged the peach-blossom
on the table near the window. Will tea
be served on the balcony, or will
we join the Countess and her
shifty son the Baron? I take a cigar
from my silver case and cut its tip.
The English fog snagged in her throat
like a fish-hook. Looking up
from her embroidery, she seemed
always to have been weeping.

Havocking folding chairs and parasols,
a young girl—chased by the yelling
dago—spurs her shaggy animal
straight for the seawall. Her cap is lost.
Inside her woolen bathing costume
her bosom.bounces free
as her unspoiled laughter.

I touch my hat, pick up
the fallen newspapers, head for the Grand-Hotel
and those porcelain collarbones—
that impenetrable smirk
and, later, that canine yelp.

A WOMAN, 1909

Careful of my new shoes
and hitching my hem, I pick
my way through the splattered
shit at the gate and follow
the cow-path down. By the river
I wade knee-deep in marigolds
an purple-tufted thistles
that snatch at the stuff of my skirt.

I woke from the usual dream
of winter. Wiping the steamed window,
1 peered into the yard. Beyond
the puddles of yellow ice
the stable-door slammed.
Mounting the trestle bridge, 1 stride
from tie to tie between the tracks,
stop at the halt, put down
my bag, straighten my bonnet,
and wait beside the twenty-gallon
milk cans. The sun has risen.
A lapwing plunges overhead
following his queer windblown cry.
The faraway school-bell clanks
for the last time in my life.

Hunkered down in the hay
the ogre was waiting—ferrets
squirming in his pockets, dried blood
under his fingernails, red-hot
rivets in his eye-sockets.
You come ‘ere, missy. Ah've summat
t' show thee, ah've not shown nobody else.
Don't be skeert, it'll not bite.

I woke, and the window mullions
framed the dark duck-egg color
of pre-dawn summer. But a door
had slammed, as it always had and would.

Once upon a time it was all
dock-leaf, cow-parsley, willow-herb;
a row of pebbles and snails
arranged on the pumiced doorstep;
a nest of mottled egg-shells, a jar
of duck-weed and tadpoles
with tiny legs and beginning fingers.

I drank a mug of tea. My ma
wrapped bread and cheese and an apple
but said not a word.
I'll be sending a letter soon, I said.

The engine coughs soot; the wheels
spin and catch and pummel
over the trestles. Somewhere beyond
the steam the fabulous towers
will rise. In a labyrinth of corridors
one of a thousand doors will yield
its treasures to the silver key
I carry close to my heart.

A MAN, 1914

My head turned to the wall
and the rise and fall of my ribs
irreproachably controlled,
I simulate sleep
while she sits reading
under the oil-lamp, half undressed,
her back to the iron bed.
A cigarette smolders between
her fingers; her wrist rests—
the blood quivering—
in the clutter of the dressing-table?
the dish of pins, the tortoiseshell
toiletry set, the glass of brown wine
its surface filmed with talc.

If I opened my eyes,
the sepia-printed wallpaper
would be a jungle of orchids—
girls dawdling with downcast gaze,
their hair the color of goldfish
and their bodies rounded as papayas
under the confusion of leaves.
Against my ear, the slow tock
of my pocket-watch marks the pace
of iron heels on a wet pavement.

When I cross the floor
of my own bedroom, I fear
to stumble into the snare
of her dropped stays and stockings.
Moonlight sidles like a tide
towards her jettisoned shoes.
They have the sweet smell of seaweed..

She turns a page
in the yellow lamp-glow. Her right foot
rests on her left knee; at the top
of her black-ribbed stocking, her leg
is a pale crescent below the paler
fringe of her drawers. The long ash
drops from her cigarette.

Behind her back, wide-eyed
I fade into the bed-linen
and am gone. But from my vantage
under the Parnassian constellations
I fancy the page under her thumb
bears the familiar images Bilitis
writhing astride the bough, the wet
bark dark between her thighs.
That the face of the reader does not
change I cannot see.

A MAN, 1936

Her lover waits in the breakfast-room.
Below the frieze of gilded acanthus
hang an Annunciation and a Pietá,
and on the long marble-topped table
stand four cages of silent parakeets.
The light from the casement windows
patterns the floor with slanting
parallelograms that reach
from the edge of the carpet
to the toes of his patent shoes.

I am the man with the long stride
who goes through the barley-field
swinging his battered hat at butterflies,
who crouches beside the bookcase
turning the pages of a yellow duodecimo
until his legs go numb, who chews
the pink meat of lamb-chops slowly
so that all the sweetness
counts, who listens to the gramophone
on the ragged terrace after moonrise
until the night-birds make reply.

Wrapped in black furs she sits
in the rear seat of the Daimler, holding
an unlit cigarette, while the chauffeur,
about to scrape the ice from the windscreen,
presses his heavy grey-gloved hand
against the glass. The motor throbs.
She raises her hand from the leather seat
and touches her dark red mouth.

Dabbing the butter from his upper lip,
the lover fiddles with his serviette.
The clock begins to chime. I lift
the cafetiere and fill his cup.
He cannot return my smile.

A WOMAN, 1939

Of course I think of my husband,
darling. Every day
when I get home I close the front door,
lean against the doorpost with my hat
still on, lift my skirt,
and he foxtrots
around the furniture, a three-olive
Martini in each hand.

Now that the sky is blue and pink,
he is standing waist-deep
in the rose-garden, his dead eye
fixed on the marble drama
of the fountains the Naiad
struggling in the Triton's arms,
above whose biceps her thighs and buttocks
are turning at sunset to flesh
or coral—he can't decide which.
No doubt the triton's hand
is tearing her cami-knickers. He reads
too much, prefers to be alone.

Every moment is a shot from the film
that he would make, or
would have made, if he made films.
No doubt he likes to move the curtain
only to hear us say the wind
has risen; he shifts his weight
behind the paneling to hear us
speak of mice or deathwatch beetle e
The murky portraits of his ancestors
have holes for eyes. His eyes.

Whom did they have in mind,
these houses? For whose use are
the thousand crested plates, the battery
of casseroles slung high, ranked
beyond reach? The tons of cutlery?
For what smug ogre do such ladles wait?
Giants, of course, are underground,
their deeds untold. And we, by their default
made heritors, shall try for size
their empty saurian uniforms—
these cruel and cavernous mantraps, set at us.

When he wants to dance, I suck
the olives off the cocktail-stick and dance.
We have our solitary pleasures, yes.