So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamor
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me . . .
—D. H. Lawrence

1: It was a kind and northern face: Mrs. Snow

Busts of the great composers
Glimmer in niches,
pale stars—
and Mrs. Snow
Towers above her pupils like an alp,
An avalanche threatening sudden
Unasked-for kindnesses.
Exiled, alone,
She does not quite complain,
But only sighs and looks off elsewhere,
Regretting the Symphony, perhaps.
In dreams, though,
The new palms of the yard,
The one brilliant flame-tree
Change back into the elms and maples
Of old, decaying streets.
—The inadequate floor quakes
With the effort of her rising.
The great legs, swollen and empurpled,
Can hardly support the hugeness
Of her need.
And if
They do not understand—her friends—
She has, in any case, the artistic
Temperament,
which isolates—
And saves!

Dust motes
Among the Chinese jars. Etchings
Of Greece and Rome. The photograph
Of Mrs. Eddy.
Brown sky, so old,
Fading above them all.

2: Busted dreams: Mrs. L.

The mother’s flaring skirt
Matches the daughter’s.
Today
They demonstrate the foxtrot,
Gliding across the living room
And back, each time avoiding with
The same heart-stopping little swoop
or dip
The shabby, cloth-draped, pushed-back
Suddenly looming sofa.
On the piano top,
A nest of souvenirs:
paper
Flowers, old programs, a broken fan,
Like a bird’s broken wing.
—And sometimes Mr. L. himself
Returns, compulsive, like a dream.
He brings
Real flowers. Thin,
Demanding, his voice soars after dark
In the old opera between them;
But no one sees the blows, only
An occasional powdered bruise,
Genteel. Does he come all the way from
Cuba each time for this?
The children
Are loosed upon the neighborhood
To wander. In the summer-idle
Schoolyard they are the last ghosts
Of the swings.

Nine o’clock, ten o’clock.
Susurrus of evenings.
The moon . . .

Tomorrow, On the Havana ferryboat again,
A little, overneat man at the rails,
Examining the waves, his nails.
And she,
Plunging the stiff comb suddenly deep
Into her hair, will turn to greet
Some half-forgotten pupil at the door.

3: The tropics: Mrs. K.

Four or five o’clock.
Late summer
Around us like a cocoon,
Gauzy and intimate.
—Sometimes she will succumb
To the passion of a nocturne,
And the fury of the climax
Ascends then through the folds
Of secret and abandoned flesh
Into those bitten finger-ends
That press from the unsuspecting keys
A certain exaltation—
dying away at last
Into some long fermata.

(Satisfaction. The brief
And inward smile.)
Meanwhile,
Dappled with mango shade,
In canvas deck chair that sags,
the husband
Sits peering out across
A forlorn sea of half-mown lawn,
Balding, out of work, a sad
Columbus.
Some drone
Of traffic, far off, reassures:
Fifty-Fourth Street still leads
Off toward the Glades at sunset. And the child,
What is he afraid of?—
The yellow lesson-book
Open on the rack
To that blue, lofty look of hers,
That floats there, cloud-like? The fan,
Placed on the floor, clicks
With every turn—metronome
Of boredom.
Once more, dear: Larghetto.
Laborers
Coming home, the long day ending.