The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest. Barbara Guest

I’ll go on singing “adieu”

Snow Angel

      The storm’s threat and ache

      Angels are in peril there on the rooftops

      Angels are grey

      Sticks the prancing

      sticks to give them shelter it rained and webs

      broke wings shrank the branch-bearing river

      shook

      bewildered as a sun

      Magister who brings

      thunder the firs are ready for their burden

      underground fires are lit

      in the dark sits

      the first Angel of snow

      tomorrow in the outraged

      sky

      his form

Santa Fe Trail

      I go separately

      The sweet knees of oxen have pressed a path for me

      ghosts with ingots have burned their bare hands

      it is the dungaree darkness with China stitched

      where the westerly winds

      and the traveler’s checks

      the evensong of salesmen

      the glistening paraphernalia of twin suitcases

      where no one speaks English.

      I go separately

      It is the wind, the rubber wind

      when we brush our teeth in the way station

      a climate to beard. What forks these roads?

      Who clammers o’er the twain?

      What murmurs and rustles in the distance

      in the white branches where the light is whipped

      piercing at the crossing as into the dunes we simmer

      and toss ourselves awhile the motor pants like a forest

      where owls from their bandaged eyes send messages

      to the Indian couple. Peaks have you heard?

      I go separately

      We have reached the arithmetics, are partially quenched

      while it growls and hints in the lost trapper’s voice

      She is coming toward us like a session of pines

      in the wild wooden air where rabbits are frozen,

      O mother of lakes and glaciers, save us gamblers

      whose wagon is perilously rapt.

Nocturne

       Toi, Seine, tu n’as rien. Deux quais, et voilà tout …

      VERLAINE

      Do you know what silence means?

       Deux quais, et voilà tout.

      My dear, my dear,

      The skaters tremble.

      In the grey there is no void.

      The grey resembles ice as the stairs

      This city. The voice begins

      Like the ice to tremble.

      Oh! foreign vase

      On the mantel your force

      Is tremendous as if the ice were soft

      And you immovable.

      Or the white statue,

      Statue of lace

      Moved even her hand or her face

      Leaned backward into the past.

      So my mysterious, unbroken calm,

      This fortitude you have kept for an hour.

      Do you know what silence means?

       Deux quais et voilà tout.

The First of May

      My eye cannot turn toward you

      Night

      because it has Day watching.

      (A spoon heated over the fire,

      a cup with milk in it

      shadows at its brim.)

      I would like to go for a walk

      in the dark

      without moonbeams

      down that path of mushrooms

      in my nightdress

      without shoes.

      I would like to sit under your wall

      and you fortify me

      as you did once on the road,

      a stranger.

      I would like to steal

      and take it to you.

      I would like to go to a hotel

      with you.

      Turn out the lights!

      Your arms, I feel them,

      your eyes, I cannot see them.

      Day is watching me

      from over the transom.

      Day whose light is blinding me,

      as lightning on the firebreak

      of a mountain,

      who brings me a quail

      caught in the smoldering underbrush

      where the smell is of yucca

      and sage.

      Day brings me this bird.

      I must go and feed it

      with milk from the cup,

      a few drops on the spoon.

      The sirens are screaming

      in the streets.

      It is an order to take cover.

      And I, I

      must bring this bird to shelter.

      I must not be caught out

      in the night

      unless I am willing

      to give you up Day forever,

      when I join the guerrillas,

      who would like my cup

      and spoon,

      who would roast my bird

      and eat it.

Dardanella

      Those forms in gauze

      we see as arches

      the tile replaces with mountain

      the script says: As water this life

      poets go to the mountain

      followed by girls in white

      The king of the heavy mustache

      “like buffaloes these men”

      cannot find dawn in his sleep

      So