The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest. Barbara Guest

may deepen

      in them the white may sink,

      it can then be constant, as music

      is constant, or a marriage, or fountains,

      or a palace whose shadow is constant.

      To make an Elegy of Spain

      is to make a song of the abyss.

      It is to cut a gorge into one’s soul

      which is suddenly no longer private.

      This privacy which has become invaded

      straightens itself up, it sings,

      “I am proud as a cañon.”

      Can you imagine the shock over the world

      against which two enormous black rocks roll

      this world that looks like a white cloud

      shifting its buttocks?

      When the guitar strikes

      A procession of those tasters of ecstasy

      the thieves of dark and light

      beginning with Villon

      whose black songs are elegies

      whose elegies are white

       Dios!

The Open Skies

      I

      Molluscs in their shell

      the skies

      Breathe up and down

      unspiraling

      Open skies

      seeded with light and stone

      II

      Pattern of drift Is eye of air

      stray ephemeral visible hand from sky form?

      III

      Revolving day prisoner in the openness

      Smiling lips daylight fair

      unbreakable you seem

      Hitched to me as I

      window thrust to you

      IV

      Cloudless

      you take

      My happiness

      rising in the morning

      Light descends to me

      buoyantly I stare

      A tremor on this hand

      light has touched

      I pass into your frailness

      Noiseless hour

      span of float and flight

      Sky without lever or stress

      V

      Tough the cone to shelter

      Ecstatic harking to upward dome

      VI

      Ash and ember

      creature and skin

      Soft body of unprotected gilt

      VII

      Sky whose fancy

      sways and swings above

      All quick airiness

      and slow guide

      Without you I cannot see.

Hurricane

      The house. The pictures there on the wall

      and the rug I slept on it as a child

      near the dining table, drowned while they ate.

      Now a threat, a dawn of horse hooves, a manger

      where the straw is blown and hens in the yard,

      their tail feathers high, and cat with open eyes.

      I wonder before it strikes from the low clouds, I

      not yet to bed near the steps where leaves lie,

      how far the water will rise?

      If the storm only a few miles from here,

      if its white cheek and wet arm,

      its eyelash curled

      and its wrist angry and at last free

      will touch this house, will caress

      the old furniture and names erase them,

      if the roof, all the chambers

      will be lifted from our faces, will we

      go gladly into its barn, magnified by wet

      and rain and drops that slope

      increasingly to that eave where we wait

      for darkness, or thunder, or night

      on the drenched tile

      to lead us away?

His Jungle

      Recognized only its hands

      That monkey face is known later

      and the wind accompanying it.

      Torrents replace the usual seasons

      conquest by variety

      A handsome thunder, a thaw

      Out of the earth comes another air

      smoky as animal.

      He lifts his hands to his face.

      The stone he must roll it.

      He must rub the flakes without

      Being shaken.

      He must break down the door

      Behind it.

      That tree how many leaves

      Strain it. He wonders

      If a four-legged beast

      Will find the flower

      And eat it. Rather it than him.

      If that place going round

      Beyond the trees if the door’s most

      Difficult inscription will be lost

      In the whirl

      Will escape him.

      Will be too mashed will remind

      Him of mold will have gone

      Too far and he dislike

      Black as he fears green,

      A chatter in the grass,

      Wind replacing ivory

      With a tusk makes him drop

      His tools.

      It is the headsman,

      Earth’s fragile runner who is caught

      In his trap who describing pain

      Plaits a monkey face

      Arc and area wide enough

      For both to fire.

Timor Mortis, Florida

      White foam tide

      waves descending

      line of blue and white

      blue submarine

      where the dark sweel of thrust