written while working on Louise Bryant project
right down the road from where she began her mothering years...
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| "Louise Bryant with Daughter Anne" Ashfield, Ma. 1926 |
“New Englandy”* Renderings
by antoinette nora claypoole
for Louise Bryant & Richard Wilbur after hearing him read in Ashfield, Mass. 10.10.10
...”They swoon down in so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
The soul shrinks
From all that it is about to remember...”
That nobody seems to be there.
The soul shrinks
From all that it is about to remember...”
from “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World”
one.
Poetry seizes me
and I am not a poet
I am not held in cryptic
translation of the soul
I am the undeciphered
craving verse.
two.
She arrives at their lake
like acres of believing
in geese. She hears nightly
it is not. An Owl. Howling
in forests of her Dickinson
chamber. the desired desk
reaches not. Hot. Window
as Slumber resents darkness
harnessed table is crowding
the Echo. Splashes. Over
quartzite hilltowns Richard
Wilbur reads their seasons
conjuring Emily, a houdini
a séance he is. her Antony.
naming her Cleopatra yet
childless she is butterflies
are like swimmers who do
not ever splash translating
he is. Dashing. quietly-hear-
three.
here the leeks harvested today
will be from the last garden
I ever see. Bitterwseet You.
know butterflies differently.
Now. There is Isis in this.
Resurrecting of soulflight.
Like a snow shovelling fiddler
There is twilight in lost days
The way histories are, he is
playing us autumn, his bliss.
four.
The geese
retreat. The lady
the seer the lake
too deep.
* “new englandy” is an Emily Dickinson signature phrase
