Twelfth Night, I.ii

He lifts his chin above the ruff.
It took an hour to pin it, crease by crease,
to the damask, glossy and stiff
as a beetle's carapace.
His hips itch underneath the farthingale.
This is his last morning in the role.

He rubs his eyes. They must be red,
like the indistinct shivers of light
floating behind the inner lid--
but who can tell? The patterns blur apart
before the form emerges. Once
he thought he saw a lady's face--

her hair at least--a glimpse of collarbone--
but at the center everything swam,
as if someone had put belladonna
into his eyes, to darken them.
It's not my mind that's giving out.
I have the play by heart--

the poetry, the smutty jokes,
the lady in disguise--how each
subtle gesture betrays her sex:
the cadence of her speech,
even in breeches, cries out feminine.
In a month she turns fourteen.

When a voice breaks, there's no fixing it.
All they could do, late in rehearsal,
was a quick revision: strike out
half Viola's songs, and let the Fool
pick up the rest. Next I'll play a nurse--
an old woman, with a wobbly voice.

After that, he needs to study
the various parts of a man,
or leave the company--
an aging boy, and common,
with nothing to show for his art
but the reputation of a catamite.

The essence of ladyhood
is a note sustained, pitched high
above the crude formalities of blood
and birth. And he had it perfectly--
though his body and his throat
connive against him--still has it by heart.

As the summer rain engenders
toads out of the mud,
he steadies his voice, fierce to pretend
its change can be withstood:
to sustain the act of his life.
His wrist-bone pokes out of her sleeve.

.

I

Walking home from our last fight,
I dropped my keys. The snow
swallowed them whole, a dimple
marking the point of loss.

Five years later, I stand
in another snow like that one:
deep, fleshy, pacific,
void of crust or definition.

Wading through the drifts is like
an argument with a mild agnostic:
no clear point of resistance, only
a foolish wallowing struggle.

Do you remember the ice crust we walked
on in Becket?--footprints so shallow
we were hardly there in body. Saplings bent
double and caught, like straining dancers.

The angle of snapped trunks.
And the moment that blank page
gave under my feet, and I stood hip-deep
in a drift. Ice gripped my thighs.

There was no stepping out of that crisp
embrace. You had moved ahead,
after deer tracks. I didn't want
to bring you back with a panicked bellow:

the thought of your laughter held me
calm there, as if I'd meant all along
to go for a wade in the snow.
I stood and listened to the distant

rush of fiddles in the cabin,
the muffled stamp of dancers.
Finally I crawled out, flattening
my body like a snowshoe,

and sprawled on the crust intact.

II

I miss the testing cruelty of your words,
the edge that kept me true
to the language itself, if not
to you. The clean pain

of your appraisal. Your mind, bent
and frozen into a brilliant,
crystal absolute. And that quick catch
after fact--your pure, half-mad certainty:

I want it for myself. I want
these lines to take you hip-deep in ice:
a sudden fall that leaves you standing
in the grip of something sure.

But this is angel snow, trite
and yielding. I won't resist
falling back against it, floundering
my arms into wings. When I stand up

and grab my hat, its crown will print
a perfect oval in the snow
over my angel's head. And I'll walk home,
leaving behind that soft white lie

and a line of crumbling tracks.

EPITHALAMION

I've earned this word at last,
after twelve years' wooing.

He declared himself
gruffly, before we hung up:

"'Love you." I replied in kind
(more than kin, more than kind).

There are two kinds of love:
one that comes unstrung

and helpless, from mother to child,
child to mother; and this other kind.

My father spoke, shy as a bride.
Epithalamion! Epithalamion!

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Poetry, Part II

Poetry, Part III

Poetry, PartIV