Home After Three Months Away
Gone now the baby's nurse,
a lioness who ruled the roost
and made the Mother cry.
She used to tie
gobbets of porkrind in bowknots of gauze--
three months they hung like soggy toast
on our eight foot magnolia tree,
and helped the English sparrows
weather a Boston winter.
Three months, three months!
Is Richard now himself again?
Dimpled with exaltation,
my daughter holds her levee in the tub.
Our noses rub,
each of us pats a stringy lock of hair--
they tell me nothing's gone.
Though I am forty-one,
not forty now, the time I put away
was child's play. After thirteen weeks
my child still dabs her cheeks
to start me shaving. When
we dress her in her sky-blue corduroy,
she changes to a boy,
and floats my shaving brush
and washcloth in the flush. . . .
Dearest I cannot loiter hre
in lather like a polar bear.
Recuperating, I neither spin nor toil.
Three stories down below,
a choreman tends our coffin's length of soil,
and seven horizontal tulips blow.
Just twelve months ago,
these flowers were pedigreed
imported Dutchmen; no no one need
distinguish them from weed.
Bushed by the late spring snow,
they cannot meet
another year's snowballing enervation.
I keep no rank nor station.
Cured, I am frizzled, stale and small.
Robert Lowell
D'autres poésies de Robert Lowell
"To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage"
"The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open.
Our...
Children of Light
Our fathers wrung their bread from stocks and stones
And...
Dolphin
My Dolphin, you only guide me by surprise,
a captive as...
Epilogue
Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme--
why are they no...
For the Union Dead
Relinquunt Ommia Servare Rem Publicam.
The...
History
History has to live with what was here,
clutching and...
Home After Three Months Away
Gone now the baby's nurse,
a lioness who ruled the...
Précédentes poésies
Winter Solstice
When you startle awake in the dark morning
heart pounding...
Will He No Come Back Again?
Royal Charlie's now awa,
Safely owre the friendly main;
When Flora had O'erfret the Firth
QUHEN Flora had o'erfret the firth
In May of every...
Westron Wind, When Wilt Thou Blow?
Westron wind, when wilt thou blow
That small rain down can...
Waly, Waly
O WALY, waly, up the bank,
And waly, waly, doun the...

