while chemotherapy dripped
through the catheter into her heart.
He drank coffee and read
the Globe. He paced; he worked
on poems; he rubbed her back
and read aloud. Overcome with dread,
they wept and affirmed
their love for each other, witlessly,
over and over again.
When it snowed one morning Jane gazed
at the darkness blurred
with flakes. They pushed the IV pump
which she called Igor
slowly past the nurses’ pods, as far
as the outside door
so that she could smell the snowy air.
pressing from a clear bowl. All daywe lay on the bed, my handstroking the deepgold of your thighs and your back.We slept and wokeentering the golden room together,lay down in it breathingquickly, thenslowly again,caressing and dozing, your hand sleepilytouching my hair now.We made in those daystiny identical rooms inside our bodieswhich the men who uncover…
almost upon us, Kantiuk and Iattempted to dash the sledgealong Crispin Bay, searching again for relicsof the Frankline Expedition. Now a storm blew,and we turned back, and we struggled slowlyin snow, lest we depart land and venture onto icefrom which a sudden fog and thawwould abandon us to the Providenceof the sea.Near nightfall I thought…
with his voice in my earI sat up in bedand held my breathand stared at the pale closed doorwhite apples and the taste of stoneif he called againI would put on my coat and galoshes
Even when we are young,we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our headswhen a grandfather dies.Then we row for years on the midsummerpond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,that began without harm, scattersinto debris on the shore,and a friend from school dropscold on a rocky strand.If a new love carries uspast middle age, our wife will…
—de Kooning, Arp, Laurencin, Henry Moore—that I’ve cherished and stared at for years,yet my eyes keep returning to the mastersof the trivial—a white stone perfectly round,tiny lead models of baseball players, a cowbell,a broken great-grandmother’s rocker,a dead dog’s toy—valueless, unforgettabledetritus that my children will throw awayas I did my mother’s souvenirs of tripswith my dead…
I constructed Necropolis.Ten million fellaheen cellsof my body floated stonesto establish a white museum.’Grisly, foul, and terrificis the speech of bones,thighs and arms slackenedinto desiccated sacs of fleshhanging from an armaturewhere muscle was, and fat.‘I lie on the painted beddiminishing, concentratedon the journey I undertaketo repose without painin the palace of darkness,my body beside your…
