STORIE VERE
Margaret Atwood
Interlunar. Darkness waits apart from any occasion for it; / like sorrow it is always available. / This is only one kind, // the kind in which there are stars / above the leaves, brilliant as steel nails / and countless and without regard. // We are walking together / on dead wet leaves in the intermoon / among the looming nocturnal rocks / which would be pinkish grey / in daylight, gnawed and softened /
by moss and ferns, which would be green, / in the musty fresh yeast smell / of trees rotting, earth returning / itself to itself // and I take your hand, which is the shape a hand / would be if you existed truly. / I wish to show you the darkness / you are so afraid of. // Trust me. This darkness / is a place you can enter and be / as safe in as you are anywhere; / you can put one foot in front of the other / and believe the sides of your eyes. / Memorize it. You will know it / again in your own time. / When the appearance of things have left you, / you will still have this darkness. / Something of your own you can carry with you. //
We have come to the edge: / the lake gives off its hush; / in the outer night there is a barred owl / calling, like a moth / against the ear, from the far shore / which is invisible. / The lake, vast and dimensionless, / doubles everything, the stars, / the boulders, itself, even the darkness / that you can walk so long in / it becomes light.
Nothing. Nothing like love to put blood / back in the language, / the difference between the beach and its / discrete rocks & schards, a hard / cuneiform, and the tender cursive / of waves; bone & liquid fishegg, desert / & saltmarsh, a green push / out of death. The vowels plump / again like lips or soaked fingers, and the fingers / themselves move around these / softening pebbles as around skin. The sky’s / not vacant and over there but close / against your eyes, molten, so near / you can taste it. It tastes of / salt. What touches / you is what you touch.
Morning in the burned house. In the burned house I am eating breakfast. / You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast, / yet here I am. // The spoon which was melted scrapes against / the bowl which was melted also. / No one else is around. // Where have they gone to, brother and sister, / mother and father? Off along the shore, / perhaps. Their clothes are still on the hangers, // their dishes piled beside the sink, / which is beside the woodstove / with its grate and sooty kettle, / every detail clear, / tin cup and rippled mirror. / The day is bright and songless, // the lake is blue, the forest watchful. / In the east a bank of cloud / rises up silently like dark bread. //
I can see the swirls in the oilcloth, / I can see the flaws in the glass, / those flares where the sun hits them. // I can’t see my own arms and legs / or know if this is a trap or blessing, / finding myself back here, where everything // in this house has long been over, / kettle and mirror, spoon and bowl, / including my own body, // including the body I had then, / including the body I have now / as I sit at this morning table, alone and happy, // bare child’s feet on the scorched floorboards / (I can almost see) / in my burning clothes, the thin green shorts // and grubby yellow T-shirt / holding my cindery, non-existent, / radiant flesh. Incandescent.
Last day. This is the last day of the last week. / It’s June, the evenings touching / our skins like plush, milkweed sweetening / the sticky air which pulses / with moths, their powdery wings and velvet / tongues. In the dusk, nighthawks and the fluting / voices from the pond, its edges / webbed with spawn. Everything / leans into the pulpy moon. // In the mornings the hens / make egg after egg, warty-shelled / and perfect; the henhouse floor / packed with old shit and winter straw / trembles with flies, green and silver. //
Who wants to leave it, who wants it / to end, water moving / against water, skin / against skin? We wade / through moist sun- / light towards nothing, which is oval // and full. This egg / in my hand is our last meal, / you break it open and the sky / turns orange again and the sun rises / again and this is the last day again.
True stories. 1. Don’t ask for the true story; / why do you need it? / It’s not what I set out with / or what I carry. / What I’m sailing with, / a knife, blue fire, / luck, a few good words / that still work, and the tide. // II. The true story was lost / on the way down to the beach, it’s something / I never had, that black tangle / of branches in a shifting light, / my blurred footprints / filling with salt/ water, this handful / of tiny bones, this owl’s kill;
a moon, crumpled papers, a coin, / the glint of an old picnic, / the hollows made by lovers / in sand a hundred / years ago: no clue. // III. The true story lies / among the other stories, / a mess of colours, like jumbled clothing / thrown off or away, / like hearts on marble, like syllables, like / butchers’ discards. / The true story is vicious / and multiple and untrue / after all. Why do you / need it? Don’t ever / ask for the true story.
Shapechangers in winter. 1. Through the slit of our open window, the wind / comes in and flows around us, nothingness / in motion, like time. The power of what is not there. / The snow empties itself down, a shadow turning / to indigo, obliterating / everything out there, roofs, cars, garbage cans, / dead flowerstalks, dog turds, it doesn’t matter. / You could read this as indifference / on the part of the universe, or else a relentless / forgiveness: all of our / scratches and blots and mortal / wounds and patched-up jobs / wiped clean in the snow’s huge erasure. // I feel it as a pressure, / an added layer: / above, the white waterfall of snow /
thundering down; then attic, moth-balled ...