Suddenly, I'm awake —
now, when my heart is sagging
and when my death, set for the take,
creaks round the nearest hill in her sure wagon.
Quite unexpectedly, the sky blows warm
as when cold day
breathes sudden fire instead
after a powerful and all-uprooting storm
risen from its day bed.
And as I stand
groping and reaching with my lips and hand,
mouth open in an agony of wanting
to fling long smouldering words that have been haunting
my loosely used, oh, many-wasted lips,
— I see the sun that dips
into the catchall of horizon and I flay
the sunless air to hold the night at bay
and rise and leave
the rock I stand on as I reach the eave
of the lowering, blackening sky above my head —
and I am dead.
I am Lot's wife. I couldn't walk away
up foreign sands, away from that poor land
where every stone was warm from my own touch
and every door and window held my shadow,
where I had walked those narrow streets of Sodom.
There I had lived among familiar people
and talked and had my various human dealings
with neighbor women and with men who traded
and knew me well and knew my husband Lot.
Though truly they had differed with our thoughts
and knew not God as Lot and I had known Him
and wouldn't listen to His words of warnings,
— they weren't worse than I: I didn't listen.
I couldn't follow Lot on that safe trail
hearing the wrath of vengeance on my town,
hearing the fall of rocks and quake of hillside,
hearing the roar of all-devouring flame,
the crying agony of men and women:
I couldn't run away: I stopped and turned —
What matter that the price I paid was life,
was immortality?
Perhaps in that brief moment
some friend or enemy before he died
breathed easier because he glimpsed, half-blinded,
through fire and smoke, beneath a fallen pillar,
my shaking arms stretched in a last farewell?
Come to classroom, padre, while the students
are not yet gathered for their next assignment.
Come with me, padre, I will show you something
for which I beg you to donate a moment.
Your brothers, padre! See, — upon the tables —
laid out and all prepared to be dissected.
Oh, yours and mine. Just shut the door now, quiet…
The overburdened, very good professor
is right now having one last cup of coffee
within the fold of his distinguished household.
There — long, grey-white ones. How they must have worried
and how they must be cold in this dank classroom.
This is my thought (— will you forgive me, padre,
for buttonholing you between the wardroom s
where you disseminated consolation —)
— This is my thought: perhaps they had no kinfolk
to say goodbye and tuck them in for sleeping.
Perhaps you missed them as they lay there dying.
You and your colleagues; stand here in the doorway
and make a sign above these proud dead people,
say a few words, — because you have connections —
to make it dignified, this their departure,
as their last bell rings and their train pulls out.
(This is not the beginning:)
The quiet one are lying on their tables,
all wrapped in white, all swaddled white like babies
(born just a life ago, just a life, — whither is it gone
now, that they are speechless, motionless,
sightless, loveless, selfless?)
Suddenly a fire alarm sounds.
Noiselessly then the people wrapped in white,
white-swaddled, shoeless, soundless, faceless, warily
step one by one onto the fire escape
and slither down, procession wise, to safety
one after one, pouring from out their window
winding lightly down, white sheets that wrap them trailing;
down the black crooked iron stairway
comes the procession, in disorted angels
showing no faces —
to escape the fire.
piched the ground, the earth, the safety,
And, having reached the ground, the earth, the safety
they stop and stand and stare in scared amazement —
What do they do now? Whither do they slither?
Now they are safe, in what direction do they turn?
A rose quartz vase shone on her dresser, and
the sandalwood immortals stood, all seven,
imported from a pine and dragon land
once governed by the Son of Heaven.
Upon her cold blue wall
was hung a single silken-tasseled scroll
brush-painted on parchment,
with craggy mountains and a waterfall
— the prized possession of her studio apartment.
And, head benignly bowed, Kwan-Yin in jade
graced her teak night stand and her mystic soul.
Yet somehow this decor forever made
the impression of stage props for a miscast role.
As if these things were images in a glass
that traveling by reflect their face and pass
— a hollow echo's alien report
from a forbidden city's empty court.
