About the Author
Cynthia Zarin was born in New York City and educated at Harvard and Columbia. She is the author of three previous books of poetry—The Watercourse, Fire Lyric, and The Swordfish Tooth—and several books for children. She is a longtime contributor to The New Yorker. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and winner of the Peter I. B. Lavan Younger Poets Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, she teaches at Yale and lives in New York City.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Birch
Bone-spur, stirrup of veins-white colt
a tree, sapling bone again, worn to a splinter,
a steeple, the birch aground
in its ravine of leaves. Abide with me, arrive
at its skinned branches, its arms pulled
from the sapling, your wrist taut,
each ganglion a gash in the tree's rent
trunk, a child's hackwork, love plus love,
my palms in your fist, that
trio a trident splitting the birch, its bark
papyrus, its scars calligraphy,
a ghost story written on
winding sheets, the trunk bowing, dead is
my father, the birch reading the news
of the day aloud as if we hadn't
heard it, the root moss lit gas,
like the veins on your ink-stained hand-
the birch all elbows, taking us in.
Aubade Against Grief
Chaste sun who would not light your face
pale as the fates
who vanished
when we turned aside; recluse
whom grace
returned and by returning banished
all thought but: Love, late
sleeper in the early hours, flesh of my bone,
centaur: Excuse
my faults—tardiness, obtuse
remit of my own
heart, unruly haste
to keep my mouth on yours, to wipe the slate
clean, to atone—
what could I want but to wait
for that light to touch your face,
chaste as Eros in the first wishedon
rush of wings?
Late Poem
“ . . . a matter of changing a slide in a magic lantern.”
I wish we were Indians and ate foie gras
and drove a gas- guzzler
and never wore seat belts
I’d have a baby, yours, cette fois,
and I’d smoke Parliaments
and we’d drink our way through the winter
in spring the baby would laugh at the moon
who is her father and her mother who is his pool
and we’d walk backwards and forwards
in lizard- skin cowboy boots
and read Gilgamesh and Tintin aloud
I’d wear only leather or feathers
plucked from endangered birds and silk
from exploited silkworms
we’d read The Economist
it would be before and after the internet
I’d send you letters by carrier pigeons
who would only fly from one window
to another in our drafty, gigantic house
with twenty- three uninsulated windows
and the dog would be always be
off his leash and always
find his way home as we will one day
and we’d feed small children
peanut butter and coffee in their milk
and I’d keep my hand glued under your belt
even while driving and cooking
and no one would have our number
except I would have yours where I’ve kept it
carved on the sole of my stiletto
which I would always wear when we walked
in the frozen and dusty wood
and we would keep warm by bickering
and falling into bed perpetually and
entirely unsafely as all the best things are
—your skin and my breath on it.
