The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest. Barbara Guest

sky to yourself and say blue

      here is your arabesque!

      The woman walks near you

      Under the sea a fern resembles you

      The heat stops and waits

      and you give nothing.

      Calm fan no one touches

In the Campagna

      “It was kind of you to ask”

      you there at the entrance.

      The cave looked even darker,

      darker than the covering leaves

      A suspicious person would say

      they guarded.

      You wanted to know if we wished

      to throw off our shields and rest

      Lay our heads in the shade

      and take from the dripping roof water

      A cupful to drink.

      Your heart was visible

      your hand open

      Why did we stare

      and grasp our pikes?

      Why are we cautious whom the forests

      had refused comfort?

      Stones on the hillside

      bruised our feet

      And the well had been empty.

      Why are we shy of your pillow

      your twin black eyes?

      The thunder came nearer

      it made a road in our ears

      Rain fell yet we lingered

      at the cave’s door

      Waiting for familiar torrents

      expecting an ordinary storm blast

      As a nephew might stop

      at our house his shoulders loaded

      With town purchases

      vegetables and dress stuffs

      This nephew who was often troublesome

      who was stealthy at equinox

      Yet of our sister’s blood

      all the same.

      You, are you Cerberus, four-footed

      who halts us this night

      While lightning

      pitches straw about

      And trees glitter strangely?

      We, four men lost

      on a starless mountain

      In the middle of the year,

      Your question: “Will you enter?”

      What does it mean?

“Who will accept our offering at this end of autumn?”

       to Seferis

      That shock of hair in the white morning

      We were up early while the grain was heaviest

      and the earth was taking leaves to its stairwell

      We, our arms in the heat, felt a chill

      while the sun turned over, went around our shoulder

      It was a cold glare; honey in the jars

      clasped and unclasped the shell.

      You of the thick twist, like an earring

      your hair, pendulous and coarsely welded,

      As if walking toward the gate one had stopped

      and picked up this object, shouted “archaic”

      To the tombsman who had accompanied the discoveries,

      neither literate nor blind, whose weight

      Bore down on the sand like a helmet

      pressing his curls.

      This fruit of the land remembers

      the warmth of the braziers on its marbles

      The dew on its columns

      and in its branches the wind

      Tossing into the cistern

      the strength-bearing seeds,

      Vengeful the storms and afterwards

      the pines meagre as they are,

      Slowly goes the animal

      up the mountain edge,

      For us carrying the bronze,

      who will not be there at harvest.

THE OPEN SKIES

The Voice Tree

      Of Anger and Sorrow

      Growth

      the parallel vines

      from you to me

      a white shadow, a break

      on the window, a cast

      To my tears that fall straight

      as the birch, thick and round

      as bulbs at your base.

      Seasons, horizons,

      natal days and those

      that are dark

      I celebrate wisely

      or with terror or watch

      the leaves as they fall

      minutely and crack

      the wide underground.

      Raven and bird from far-off

      … at your neck

      feathers of sea tern

      tree of iodine and blue …

      When you are spine

      and leafless branch

      how you will rage

      you will force me

      in the garden packed with snow

      to surround you with fire

      to pad your roots with ash

      the red flames to your green throat

      the wild spark to your open mouth

      Then your voice in the smoke

      leaping and shouting

      the icicles melting, melting.

Lights of My Eyes

      Lights of my eyes

      my only

      they’re turning it off

      while we’re asleep on this shore

      and the thick daffodils

      are crying

      lights of my eyes

      don’t be afraid of me

      what we saw

      rivers and roads

      ruins

      the cast of the sculpture in winter

      They will return your voice

      and