Four Poems

Honor Moore

DELINQUENT MUSE

heels dug in, the shoulders	shape in darkness
skin I must reach for	washed with music
can’t see eyes	day through a window
or back to desire	at last it speaks
what I can’t describe	red of tanager
handsome is	rising like land
the shoulders	or laughter where
he always stands	waiting waiting for music
so light breaks and I see	an ocean there
hand on his hand	cliff edge slung down
splash of flesh at the sleeve	like night, the sun
my arms a necklace	through a cloud
for his shoulders	how do you paint
my arms a laughing necklace	a face?
heels dug in and leaning	here oh come here
I see the future	so I can see him
at the shore, ocean, a globe	in one hand
at his cheek	only once for the kiss
how do you paint a face?	or can you?
smudged by rain, his	face clear across the room
hand at my back	luxury as my eyes
depict what’s vanished, shadows	rest at his hairline
shoulders	and sweep
how have you	down the length of him
where have you	gone now, inexplicable
face, its planes articulate	feeling, no I’d call it
light but the lips	pain, paint the lips
glass, then eyes	one after the other
finally again blue	later I could look and
green, looking back	remember early summer
lashes	dark slow to come
at entrance shoulders	music into night
in the white room his flesh	a way to understand
the color of a rose	what he is
I remember in light	after so much time
the blue glass, he turns	toward me now
swear oh swear the question	and the kiss

THE LAKE

Pale water, mountains almost black, clouds

lifting from the lake—an old dock creaks

at loose moorings, and from the summit, mountains

until the horizon goes blind. What thousand

do you count, walking a narrow bridge

or bending as your canoe glides under it?

This is a language we have written from

always, though it bears its own fate—color

of fern in shade, such a green it must tell

the truth; a thatch of grass points to

then obscures underground water, another

tree dead across the path. Compare a sentence

broken as you talk at a table, a gun

in the pocket of a child, the survivor

alone at her desk. She did not teach this—

high heels, gray suit cinched at her waist, red

lipstick, evident jaw. Tell me, how is it

she comes back now? Nor did she teach this—

to hear only one’s own voice in the quiet;

or to think alone, out into the dark

pardon of the night. She had no husband,

her hair curled garishly. I can’t get back

her voice, just her mouth gesticulating,

and blond Peter who killed himself in London

after we grew up. In the darkness, silent

numbers etch themselves in red. I remember

the pale disk traversed by hands, figures

marking place along a circumference

that lay in wait once, like the future.

In the city night, a door closes—

refrigerator, car, you can’t tell which.

What does it mean, she asked us, to be good?

I ask to understand the impulse toward

murder. I ask to be loved. And quiet,

my head between those wide hands, a river

spreads north in autumn light, pale as a lake.

I’ve seen the beginning of that river,

narrow as a brook, nothing built at its edge.

At the end of the path, a woman turns

to look back, wearing white, holding roses.

HOTEL FLORIDIA

We are at the beach, Susan carrying her bed.

I have no bed and night is approaching, the water is dark.

Nor do I have appropriate clothes.

All morning I dream what I want, the hot right at my collar breathing.

I can see you don’t understand.

I am scaring you.

The sky is teal, the ocean, color of a razor.

A woman carries a butter yellow umbrella and her daughters follow her.

That evening in the city, his hand low on my back, we walked.

When he kissed me on the hotel banquette he said he didn’t care.

Ocean the color of a razor

Once when I was a child, a small child, my father swept his long black cloak around me

and we climbed the stone stairs.

Already men were singing

the roof struts meeting like fingers or the inside of a woman.

Susan is carrying her bed.

I have no bed. It’s colder.

After he held me that way, he wouldn’t talk.

I was the one to turn the shiny knob

shut the door behind him

not watching as he pressed for the elevator.

I open the faucet and water breaks from it

turning pale teal as the tub fills.

Hot is on the left.

It was evening. I could hear men singing across the street

the bell in the tower.

I saw my house collapse, and a man came to the door

with two small children.

He opened the gate and we climbed the stone stairs.

It was cold, so he wrapped me in his long wool cloak which was heavy and black.

During the last hour of sleep, Susan beckons me to the ocean, an ocean

the color of razor blades for which I am not prepared.

She carries a bed, but I have no bed.

Children race from the sand into the water as the dark rises.

We will sleep here.

At morning sun fills the house so you can see every fault

the chip in shiny white paint

but at evening it is the leaves of ficus you see, grainy in the dark,

evening still giving pale light through the white accordion blind.

And so, she said, you come to him quite stripped.

We have been friends for years now, and she has watched me.

She has been with me through all of it,

an ocean the color of razors.

You must have been lonely, he said.

I don’t know if I was lonely, I said.

When we got near the avenue we stopped.

All morning you dream what you want, choosing your music.

DARLING

You came to me one long night in two dreams.

It was the day of your funeral, but you were still alive, vividly

making last-minute arrangements, greeting guests.

The room had the gray shadowy light of a place that has no use for day

but then it opened to sunlight and the walls turned

cream or peach, and there on a platform was a coffin the color of chalk

awaiting you. You seemed to wear green, spring green, long-sleeved, green-sleeved

and once in a flash you looked like a woman, as I imagine your mother—

dark hair, decisive eyebrows angled in surprise across a narrow brow.

Everyone we knew arrived, and people I didn’t know,

a great gay poet, old now and tall, with a bright face, wearing glasses, a shawl

handwoven of sienna brown wrapped around his head as if he were an Arab woman.

You embraced. It was the first time I had seen one man kiss another and call him darling

and I wondered what had brought you to look at each other that way,

to call each other darling here at the edge of death.

Suddenly there is no one in the room, the courtyard

where the coffin is, where the death will take place, no one but you and me

All at once, the coffin, which has been floating on water, on water faintly blue

begins to disintegrate, to break apart

like something soluble, and you, in your weakness and illness

step into the water, which comes to your thigh, and, with some annoyance

almost crying at the effort, try to raise it from the water to keep it whole.

I watch, and then I am in the water with you, lifting.

I wake from the dream, but in spite of the morning light, I am asleep again

and you are there, almost well, turning on the stairs.

As we climb to a large room, I tell you my dream

about the tall gay poet, so old and distinguished in his shawl, who embraced you

whom you held and called darling. Oh yes, you say, with a far off smile

and take me in your arms, lift me and carry me as I protest. I don’t need

to be carried, you are dying, you’ll hurt your back.

You are dressed now, like a servant boy in tattered

linens, as if costumed for a play.

Dear one, I have met a man who touches me so it burns.

I am wearing beautiful pale clothes, and we are standing in a room, my hands open as he

feels at the length of me, as he looks seriously into my face, or down

my body, his hand holding the place between my legs, waiting there or

questioning, as I burn down into his fingers, my arms

loosening, whoever I am sheared away.

I tell you this even though I’m not sure what you’ll say back.

In life you might have shrugged, keeping quiet

all those years of sex, what happened those nights you left after dinner

before you got sober, before the disease came that took you and all your friends

and with them, a certain languor and handsomeness.

I imagine that in death whatever kept our silence may have broken

that you might now understand what this man’s hands force me to question

how far desire takes the body before mindfulness leaves it,

what it was for you when a man’s touch

burned you open, or burned you back to such blankness and hope

there was nothing you wouldn’t do to have him.