Between the Porch and the Altar

I.

MOTHER AND SON

Meeting his mother makes him lose ten years,

Or is it twenty? Time, no doubt, has ears

That listen to the swallowed serpent, wound

Into its bowels, but he thinks no sound

Is possible before her, he thinks the past

Is settled. It is honest to hold fast

Merely to what one sees with one’s own eyes

When the red velvet curves and haunches rise

To blot him from the pretty driftwood fire’s

Façade of welcome. Then the son retires

Into the sack and selfhood of the boy

Who clawed through fallen houses of his Troy,

Homely and human only when the flames

Crackle in recollection. Nothing shames

Him more than this uncoiling, counterfeit

Body presented as an idol. It

Is something in a circus, big as life,

The painted dragon, a mother and a wife

With flat glass eyes pushed at him on a stick;

The human mover crawls to make them click.

The forehead of her father’s portrait peels

With rosy dryness, and the schoolboy kneels

To ask the benediction of the hand,

Lifted as though to motion him to stand,

Dangling its watch-chain on the Holy Book—

A little golden snake that mouths a hook.

II.

ADAM AND EVE

The Farmer sizzles on his shaft all day.

He is content and centuries away

From white-hot Concord, and he stands on guard.

Or is he melting down like sculptured lard?

His hand is crisp and steady on the plough.

I quarrelled with you, but am happy now

To while away my life for your unrest

Of terror. Never to have lived is best;

Man tasted Eve with death. I taste my wife

And children while I hold your hands. I knife

Their names into this elm. What is exempt?

I eye the statue with an awed contempt

And see the puritanical façade

Of the white church that Irish exiles made

For Patrick—that Colonial from Rome

Had magicked the charmed serpents from their home,

As though he were the Piper. Will his breath

Scorch the red dragon of my nerves to death?

By sundown we are on a shore. You walk

A little way before me and I talk,

Half to myself and half aloud. They lied,

My cold-eyed seedy fathers when they died,

Or rather threw their lives away, to fix

Sterile, forbidding nameplates on the bricks

Above a kettle. Jesus rest their souls!

You cry for help. Your market-basket rolls

With all its baking apples in the lake.

You watch the whorish slither of a snake

That chokes a duckling. When we try to kiss,

Our eyes are slits and cringing, and we hiss;

Scales glitter on our bodies as we fall.

The Farmer melts upon his pedestal.

III.

KATHERINE’S DREAM

It must have been a Friday. I could hear

The top-floor typist’s thunder and the beer

That you had brought in cases hurt my head;

I’d sent the pillows flying from my bed,

I hugged my knees together and I gasped.

The dangling telephone receiver rasped

Like someone in a dream who cannot stop

For breath or logic till his victim drop

To darkness and the sheets. I must have slept,

But still could hear my father who had kept

Your guilty presents but cut off my hair.

He whispers that he really doesn’t care

If I am your kept woman all my life,

Or ruin your two children and your wife;

But my dishonor makes him drink. Of course

I’ll tell the court the truth for his divorce.

I walk through snow into St. Patrick’s yard.

Black nuns with glasses smile and stand on guard

Before a bulkhead in a bank of snow,

Whose charred doors open, as good people go

Inside by twos to the confessor. One

Must have a friend to enter there, but none

Is friendless in this crowd, and the nuns smile.

I stand aside and marvel; for a while

The winter sun is pleasant and it warms

My heart with love for others, but the swarms

Of penitents have dwindled. I begin

To cry and ask God’s pardon of our sin.

Where are you? You were with me and are gone.

All the forgiven couples hurry on

To dinner and their nights, and none will stop.

I run about in circles till I drop

Against a padlocked bulkhead in a yard

Where faces redden and the snow is hard.

IV.

AT THE ALTAR

I sit at a gold table with my girl

Whose eyelids burn with brandy. What a whirl

Of Easter eggs is colored by the lights,

As the Norwegian dancer’s crystalled tights

Flash with her naked leg’s high-booted skate,

Like Northern Lights upon my watching plate.

The twinkling steel above me is a star;

I am a fallen Christmas tree. Our car

Races through seven red-lights—then the road

Is unpatrolled and empty, and a load

Of ply-wood with a tail-light makes us slow.

I turn and whisper in her ear. You know

I want to leave my mother and my wife,

You wouldn’t have me tied to them for life …

Time runs, the windshield runs with stars. The past

Is cities from a train, until at last

Its escalating and black-windowed blocks

Recoil against a Gothic church. The clocks

Are tolling. I am dying. The shocked stones

Are falling like a ton of bricks and bones

That snap and splinter and descend in glass

Before a priest who mumbles through his Mass

And sprinkles holy water; and the Day

Breaks with its lightning on the man of clay,

Dies amara valde. Here the Lord

Is Lucifer in harness: hand on sword,

He watches me for Mother, and will turn

The bier and baby-carriage where I burn.