The Anti-Grief. Marianne Boruch

Stunned ocean. Unquiet.

      Wound

      I found a paper ruler made

      to measure one exact. Up to six inches or

      in centimeters, take your pick.

      A little worn and bent

      in one place. Now on a shelf on its

      calibrated edge. Imagine

      the ambulance, an EMT close, reading

      tiny print. Discard

      after single use. And I wonder

      if shattered glass and smoking engine

      got in the way of rescue, whether

      the wound one inch or two, if the jagged fleshy depth

      really a trapdoor the spirit took

      to leave the body for good.

      I have a kit in my car, a zippered black bag of

      bandages and ointment, a knife, scissors in there,

      and inexplicitly, rope—what else—

      Endless gauze. A waterfall of gauze, a frozen field

      of gauze but soft, the opposite of chain mail

      knights wore into battle, told

      sure, every fight is noble. But even history forgets

      why oh why oh why.

      Blood-rush. Garish shock of

      alive! escape! An ambulance fact sheet says

      abridgment, says a complete

      exorcism—did I read that right?—of exposed edges.

      Bleeding, stop. Wound, begin to close—

      Promise and threat go on because one

      has to prophesy

      to make any sense of tragedy.

      I take the point: beware. Clots can, keep doing,

      and infection knows the best place.

      In a street, in the dark, under gaslights at 2 a.m.—

      Those 19th-century engravings, low voices.

      I Saw a House, a Field

      Most of the rooms muted by cold,

      and the furniture there

      with its human chill under vast drapes

      of plastic for the season—

      Because eventually we are

      an austerity, walking room to room

      enamored and saddened, all the crazy variations

      of bed and table, clocks,

      books on a shelf, foreign harbors etched

      some yesterday, framed for a wall.

      And the effrontery of windows assuming

      how lovely out, a certainty

      of lawn and woods, distance on a road, voices

      that in summer drift up and move away.

      Desire. That continues

      and continuing is the part loved

      just as there is emptiness with an occasion in it,

      clothes to remove before you ease into a bath.

      Branches and branches scraping is

      winter. And after midnight, near morning when

      I stepped out, the moon by half,

      was it deer I saw? A little one and maybe

      its mother. Or they were

      smaller than deer. Or larger.

      Oh but they were strange, stopped

      across the snow like that.

      The No-Name Tapestries

      When I think of the dead, it means

       they’re thinking

      of me, I delude myself happily, on occasion,

      assuming the past

      a thing to cherish like a face

      surprised I bothered to come at all, given

      the rain and the long drive.

      But you were always let’s go anyway.

      The commonest phrase: alive and well.

      As if we jumped out of a hole

      to stand here radiant.

      In the no-name old tapestries, many

      with halos, a glow or

      a circle of jagged lines around each head

      never bowed at the table, simply

      looking straight on, like a mirror gives us

      back to ourselves.

      If sometimes the women

      in those lush hangings so plainly dressed,

      their rims woven

      deep and lit, turn sideways, the hills,

      a blue distance involved—

      Out there. The one vanished, or just now

      walking away—

      In Dürer’s Engraving

      Adam gets three for his privates—a triplet affair

      as in poison ivy, as in the venerable

      box elder. Eve, one wide leaf,

      or it could be a smashed, very sorry rose. I need

      better glasses. Engravings

      take time. Still Adam looks at her—

      curious or just wary, was love

      invented yet?—and she, only at the snake wrapped

      sensibly for balance around a young tree.

      An apple. Sure, the apple:

      okay tempting enough, even as E and A stand there

      fully bodied and souled, not terribly young, years

      to build up such muscle (Adam), such flesh (Eve) though

      I can’t say they’re long in the tooth. Nary a tooth

      to scare that garden. The rumor: no weapons, no way.

      Those creatures in the foreground or behind

      oblivious, or bored with the notion prey in whatever

      shaft of light for naps: a mouse, a cat,

      an ox, etcetera, each different-dreaming day or night if any

      beyond the likes of us really do dream. Curly hair (Eve

      with her lots more), side by side, roughly same

      height, breadth, the standard

      wedding pose—minus outfits—except

      between them the snake so soon to be famous

      I almost forget Eve’s set there to

      take