When I said she was suffering, what I meant was that I was a barn owl,
Caught outside the chicken wire that surrounds the barn.
When I told you she would never speak again, I meant only
To a Certain person. When I said nothing inhumane was alien
To her, I meant nothing human too.
Living inside the fingers of Glenn Gould is a tough life to live.
It’s relatively slim there, and loud with his beauty which is insatiable
And hard to take. Then there is his Humming, especially with Mozart,
Constantly, which makes my own hands tremble, cramp.
When I said she yearned to ache,
I meant I ache to yearn, forevermore.
When I told you I went “wrong,” I was right about that one.
When I placed sorrel, or even poppies, on her loved ones’ graves, I meant
That I would stay alive forever, in order to feed you and keep you warm.
Beethoven, a genius too, can get on my nerves, too much cantering
Across the pages of his work. Hush down there on your agonies,
Sublime is pain.
Here is the seamstress, stitching
The pinstripe pantlegs of a gentleman, kneeling at his knees.
What I meant is that he would never be handsome or tall enough for me.
Here is the spindle where she wove her dog’s fur into winter wool.
When I told you: here is the goat, stewing in her vat with other re-claimed
Vegetables, what I meant was: I am appalled.
Here is the hedgehog, hiding desperately in his hedge.
When I said you can only say two words
To Orphists, I meant: Shut Up.
Close the skylight, I am cold with joy.
I was jealous of all the animals who nap in sun and hunt by night.
No one is annoyed by their nocturnal habits the way they are by mine.
When I said my love was chemical, I meant my love was chemical.
The castle is gorgeous, haunted by red light. You told me: being here
Is like living in your thoracic cavity.
When I said please let us not even speak of the Pixie
Haircut, I meant I had been Rapunzel in the school drama every spring
Till then. After the shearing, I was the stepmother who rarely spoke, made pies
With rampion, and was not a star. Not long thereafter
I was put away. On the night of my first red moon, I was older than
I ever thought I’d live to be.
When I tell everyone that I can’t read,
No one takes my word for it because I certainly, as you can see, still write.
Though I had not expected this, I woke up as a lark
Inside his moccasin. When he woke and put his big foot in,
Most of my wing-bones broke. When I wrote: you have been outside
The body now, I meant: you have been outside my body now.
When I said I would never make even one mistake, I meant
I misspelled “millennium” on the first page of my first book.
In the tower, I could only tell the truth
To animals. I could fit inside a cricket’s overalls. All this for what.
The sound of the cicadas reaches full stop.
No one notices until, one day, a person says that he feels cold.
To what were they clinging when they came to their end?
All the French kissing, it was true.
My heart is chamber music, filled with hearing aids, their batteries,
Sketches of the Panthera tigris, and hyacinth petals from an ancient world.
When I said “Blue Nile,” I meant the whole one in Khartoum.
When I said “Nilotic water,” I meant to impress you with my musicality.
When I wrote the nettles stung me, I meant the timbre of his voice.
The horses! Everywhere, nestled in their speckled eggs, in every room
I ever spoke in, waiting to be born.
All the never kissing, that was true as well.
Tell them all the lies were white ones and, relatively speaking, small.
In the nursing home, it seems there are no nurses
And it’s no place there
Like home. When I said: who would do this to us, I meant
Who would allow us to end this way but keep on going on like that.
Our small ideas,
Our little thoughts, trapped inside their amber fossils, now unspeakable.
