Read by the Author

The Old Lady

I have dreed my dree, I have wooed my wyrd,

and now I shall grow a five-foot beard

and braid it into tiny braids

and wander where the webfoot wades

among the water’s shining blades.

I will fear nothing I have feared.

I’m the queen of spades, the jack of trades,

braiding my knives into my beard.

Why should I know what I have known?

Once was enough to make it my own.

The things I got I will forget.

I’ll knot my beard into a net

and cast the net and catch a fish

who will ungrant my every wish

and leave me nothing but a stone

on the riverbed alone,

leave me nothing but a rock

where the feet of herons walk.

The Housewife

I will follow the meter man

and read the whirling dials

hidden on houses by bushes,

O sweet Peter my meter man!

The dials go creepwhirling round and round.

Thrushes are chuckling under the bushes.

Here comes the postman walking his miles

round and round, over the ground,

brave Daily Bailey my maily man!

I will destroy the dials with you,

I will lose the letters with you,

Peter the Reader, Bailey-go-gaily,

only be true to me, only be true.

The Girl at the Gate of Fairyland

Were it only I and Oberon,

the old tale would take a new turn.

Titania and Tam Lin, some trim lad

it always is, she aching after him,

the Queen and the commoner. Then something queers it,

her fancy fades, she finds a new one,

and Tam’s on the hillside, heavy-hearted,

palely loitering, dead leaves in his pocket.

But riding past on their pale roans,

if the Elf Lord, not the lady,

looked aside, if he saw me see him,

if our eyes met, oh, my mortality

would strike him to his heart’s socket,

till glad of grief he grasped at life

and left his kingdom for my quick lands,

to stand as day outstared the dawn

hand in hand with me on the hillside,

to learn the lovers, not their love, will die --

if it were only Oberon and I!

The Shiksa

My joyful Jew, my jubilant Jew,

my young King David, an ear so true,

I would have given the world for you.

Why did you listen to elderly voices

telling you how to limit your choices?

88 piano keys.

44 today.

22 tomorrow.

Now the only key you play

the sour note of sorrow.

No music under the bigotries.

The tie that binds untied us,

divinities divide us.

Sheep to that side, this side goats.

Still, kneeling on my knobby knees,

I hear the holy psalms, the notes

of 87 silent keys.

The Drowned Girl

My head is wet

My head is wet

Something

Something

I forget

I did not want to wash my hair

Something terrible

unbearable

or maybe not

Sometimes babies are born dead

It doesn’t matter

in the water

what I wanted or forgot

The Forsaken Shepherdess

I love to sit beside the stream

that runs so fast and fiery,

setting the forest trees aflame

with the joy of its desiring.

I watch the fishes of the stream,

the blinding trout, the blazing carp,

and hear its music go and come,

plucking the incandescent harp.

I’ll sit beside the lava stream

as my lambs leap and gambol

like molten clouds at sunset time,

flocking crimson, fleeting nimble.

I’ll pipe my tune of joy and shame,

a simple shepherdess alone,

while slower, blacker runs the stream

and all the lowlands turn to stone.

The Mute

What song will she sing

who is dumb? She can hum

like bees, she can rustle

like the trees, like the birds

she can whistle, anything

but words.

Why is she so?

Her human tongue was cleft

by a feathered arrow. The dark sparrow,

the judgment crow, the anger owl

split her language, left

her to trill and hiss and howl.

Standing near her

I sing for her

words of fear

and hope and horror.

  The Lorelei to Heinrich Heine

I don’t know why I am so sad.

I watch the river ships go by

and see a harmless sailor lad

and call him and he comes to me

into my arms to die

and we sink down and down

he to drown, not I,

for what I breathe is not the air

when I sit lonely in the sun

and comb my hair and comb my hair

till there comes by another one,

some boy a mother had,

to sink with me and die.

O why am I so sad?

The Woman in the Attic

I am the mad woman in the attic,

professionally frantic. Hear my laugh?

Loud, singularly mirthless, automatic.

I am the first and worthless wife.

My heart is not in this poem.

How could it be? My life

is contingent, like that of the Golem

or the Golden Calf,

on a word written on my forehead,

or a popular belief.

I am boring, I am bored.

Ha ha I say to joy, ha ha to grief.

Anonyma

When the great lordly singers hush,

my casual and selfless voice

that takes no profit, makes no choice,

pipes up, indifferent as a thrush.

When brazen monuments corrode

and praise is dust in dust with blame

and dateless night hides every name,

I still go lilting down the road.

It’s sad that hopes and poets die,

but my dear task and fondest care

is to bear softly what’s to bear

and ever to sing the lullabye.

The Little Girl

When Mother sends me to see Gran

I wear my old red hood

and walk as fast as ever I can,

trit-trotting through the wood.

And when I see the Wolf in bed

in Granny’s flannel gown,

he says the things he’s always said

and gobbles me right down.

Inside his gut I play my drums

and Granny plays her sax,

until the noble Woodsman comes

and splits him with an ax.

Then she and I come crawling out

all bilious and gory,

and listen to the people shout

and tell the hero’s story.

He smiles modestly; they cheer;

and I trot home alone,

and nobody will ever hear

Little Reddy Ridey Roodey on the drumbarumbarumba

and Great Gut Granny on the alto saxophone.

The Woman in the Basement

I am the woman in the basement

singing singing very low

so nobody hears me at my magic casement

opening on nowhere to go.

I am the old old old old woman

dug halfway into the ground

forgetting to be nice and to be human

fingering the treasures I have found:

the booby rubies and the faded jade

the lying diamonds and the true moon stone.

Here underneath my house I’m not afraid.

I’ve already counted all the bones.

Ulna, Humerus, Rib, Toe, Skull:

You’re no more me than I am you.

You’re discrete and pure and dull.

I am innumerable and askew.

Long years past birth I multiply.

I populate the universe.

Scattered stars in earthen sky,

I am all the Ancestors.