After Reading Robert Lowell Asked Helen Vendler:

Appeal to the Great Spirit by Cyrus E. Dallin

After Reading Robert Lowell Asked Helen Vendler:

Why don’t they ever say what I’d like them to say?....That I am heartbreaking.                

I willed it, planned it so

when you set out for home---and to tell you all

the trials you must suffer in your palace...

Endure them all.  You must.  You have no choice.

“In silence,” she added, “you must bear a world of pain”

                                                                Homer

                                                                The Oddysey

Rather than saying Isn’t it so? I’ll say It is

so! I only have to move an it and bend the questioning

ear straight as the ram-

rod it is and has been.  The last time

I sat in to listen I doubt you

even knew I was

there--some cataract had fashioned its thin glass

statue over the lens

of your eye and to save myself from being myself I imagine

what it’s like to see through it

from your eyeball: the way maybe you crawl

to the bathroom in the dark

because if you’re on your hands

and knees you told me once

you can’t fall

off.  It’s a small space and not at all

pliable not at all accommodating to

the shape of my fingers the way

latex try to be if I am given (chosen?)

the right size.  Maybe that’s the start

of what’s wrong with all of us: we sit

down to the potter's wheel and are afraid

to touch the mud and water.  It’s enough

to grasp it with a thin partician

sterilizing our palms protecting

our fingertips from the grit that scratches

our print.  I think that

when I try to look through

your eye if I can stand

tall enough to roll the shade up (remember how the spring’s broke

the pull cord’s missing?) I might go blind

as you--and so I scratch

at the surface bare handed and it flakes

off like mica.  When the sun comes

up enough to brighten

your courtyard and it’s as sad

and broken as your interior I begin feeling myself taking

my leave.  But not before I see the head

less statues and brown grass hail-size mothballs scattered

and the acne of combat

or target practice today I don’t want to remember

which.  Is it

a graveyard?  Is it an sculptor’s castoff

of arms and faces, all those false

beginnings?  Is that what you see?  And look--

since I stepped inside

of you that exclamation has bent itself

back into an ear.  I’m not getting anywhere

near to where I want to end.  It’s a Ferris

wheel ride.  Maybe it’s enough to sit

in the question, to touch your hand

while you die for forever this time

to sit inside your lowering closures

and slip out like a possum, stuffing

my pockets with enough memory as I can carry

as I can sneak out with without

being noticed or seen, or if I’m seen

given a curt nod to be (like Judas maybe)

on my way quickly please,

and quietly.