Lucie Brock-Broido

Lady With An Ermine

      In the snow, white noise, a gathering
Of foxes oddly standing still in the milk broth of oblivion.

      In the keep at Castlestrange, an ermine pelt in the shape
Of an ermine animal, but empty, slung over the carved

      Oak chair, carelessly & keeping no
One warm.

Caravansary

Here, on the first accidental
Day of winter in the middle
Of the great design & hemp

Of fall, my careless heart
Would be an ice-freaked hall,
Ill-lit, a hostelry, silked & hallowed

All along the sovereign
Persian corridors. I am
Implacable, profoundly influenced

By nothing short of filament
Or pilgrimage & light-piqued
Hours--portaled, saint-freaked, coy.

It will not be given to me, in this
Scurvy life to speak,
This time, of caravans of salt, or joy.

Morgue Near Heaven

If I imagine him healthy in his distressed
       Leather coat on someone's Sears plaid
Couch some years ago, then I will know
       All the nouns for shame he knows.

Perhaps I will write green as many times
       As he; he is affectionate about the spring; I
Dread it as I dread the sulky pull of the season's
       Needle in its vein, drawing in.

I love him as I love all of the Dakotas, the two
       Of them to which I've never been, just
As I've never really seen a death mask
       Of his face, because, technically,

He's never been that way, not yet.
       If I keep his small triangle of a letter
In his own hand close to mine, then
       Maybe I will inherit all the Teutonic

Sentences he knows by heart, or all that
       Grammar of
The night, the factory
       Of slandering and fame.

---

Lucie Brock-Broido is the author of two collections of poetry, A Hunger and The Master Letters. Her third book, Trouble in Mind, will be published by Knopf in 2002. She is Director of Poetry in the School of the Arts at Columbia University, and lives in New York City and in Cambridge, Massachusetts. contents | next