Last Days: My Two Mothers

Last Days: My Two Mothers

Is the one unpardonable sin

our fear of not being wanted?

For this, will mother go on cleaning house

for eternity, and making it unlivable?

Is getting well ever an art,

or art a way to get well?

                                                Robert Lowell

                                                Unwanted

On the last day do you suppose we couldn’t hurry

that we could take it like it were our first day

our time our steps our breath let our eye

slide like light up and up then when noon

down and down as nonchalant as always?

I want to remember you that way as a place

sustaining a monument undeterred by hurricane

or typhoon of the soul a great stone chapel in the middle

of the road to nowhere but a somewhere some-

one could come to love.  But honestly I don’t know

if this is possible anymore.  It’ll all come back

to me like a wind up from the outhouse you never

dug sufficiently deep but would stuff every gift

I ever brought into the hole and then let loose

your bowels.  I am a long time learning you foul

everything and what’s more you want to what’s

more than that if you could you’d gut me with

a vengeance and glee.  Even these what I’d meant

to lay down under a stone on your grave and walk

away forever with distance my amputation

my anesthesia...even this has been taken from

me.  I’d thought I’d wanted some compromise

but really what I want is peace to walk away

without the teeth of filial responsibility stuck

in my calf making me limp unable to shake

the small dog growling pissing growling pissing.

I want not to be sad about you or responsible

for you.  Not owe you.  Be controlled and sunk

under stone and drowned by you.  No.  I could tell 

you if it mattered to you that the saddest thing 

I've seen recently was in a cemetar called Stark.

It's in Dunbarton and it's where Robert Lowell's

flat out cold next to his mother.  Who could’ve

should’ve ground up his bones and thrown him

over the stone shoulders of his gods all

over the world.  Make a trek of it, a pilgrimage.

I’m beginning to relate to the man whose

mother didn’t want him from the start who turned

devil to the world to let loose the noose who never

really could not ever not be hanged by it.  Last day.

Right.  That last day you and your daughter

the one who usurped you from the rest of us

sat close to where you lay bored out of her skull

while you died.  I think you’re both cut

from the same skein.  I think when I get furious

its at both of you.  I think it’s because the people

who would love you you shove down that shit

hole.  So listen, forget the whole thing.  Let me

in my free time take my rock to Robert instead. 

He’s been dead since the year I turned seven. 

That was the year I ate God for the first time.  The year

you tried under the covers to smother me.  It’s

best if we let’s just forget the whole thing.  Forget it.

Let me, it’s a painful amputation yes, limp off

and not look back. Let me forgive you this and wish

you health but never have to mourn you again.