I
Cold, cold, cold
was the merciless blood of your father.
By the halo of his breath
your mother knew him;
by January she knew him,
and dreaded the knowledge.
His winter breath
made tears impossible for her.
glazed the air in the kitchen,
dulled the knife,
crusted with ice the milk jug,
soured the butter,
gave fever to all iron objects
and clenched at her throat,
making speech impossible for her.
She passed him and crept sidewise
down the stairs,
loathing the touch
of the doorknob he had clasped,
hating the napkin
he had used at the table.
The children bolted their food
and played outdoors in winter.
Hopscotch took them
blocks away from their father.
Nowhere was ease
but watchfulness in all corners.
The parlor was uncomfortable as the cellar,
the attic was filled with rafts of legal papers,
testimony at lawsuits
stuffed the pillows,
dawn was judicial
and noon made confiscations.
Evening hunched
and hawked on the roof like a jury.
II
The lawyer’s house
was always in death’s country.
A death was coming.
The minister knew it was coming.
The shroud was cut
before the doctor was summoned.
Winter ached
in the sewing-women’s knuckles.
Your mother knew it.
Familiar and loveless knowledge
withered her running heart
and gave it fever.
Arthritis twisted her.
Vivid roses
her blanched face wore in death,
the borrowed plumage of a wealthy cousin . . .
◆ ◆ ◆
The funeral cortege,
through the financial district,
among the childlike
images of the park
and into the banker’s
and brewer’s dream of the suburbs
bore with pomp
a woman dead on Monday.
The rumps and nostrils
of horses steamed and frosted.
A mist hung on
the propriety of mourners,
but whisky would hearten
the sentiments felt incumbent
and give unto death
the homage of business partners.
made tears impossible for you.
It clenched at your throat,
it froze upon your eyelids.
And on that morning —
precociously — for always —
you lost belief
in everything but loss,
gave credence only to doubt,
and began even then,
as though it were always intended,
to form in your heart
the cortege of future betrayals —
the loveless acts
of crude and familiar knowledge.