BREUGHEL’S TRIUMPH OF DEATH
In Breughel's late painting
there's no hope for us.
Tiny skeletons
out of dark amphorae poured.
Burning, warring,
how awful they are, out to kill.
The dead finish off the living,
one by one.
Humanity's nonsense, farewell.
Grasses fail also,
the least bloom—
there's none of that
seasonal joy. It's over,
an apocalyptic rout.
Nothing seemly
or fruitful anywhere,
no harvest colors
that can restore a willing heart.
Is this what we came for?
The earth done with us, almost?
How lovely it was,
the toiling, the spinning . . .
the ice ponds, the yellow fields.
Even the wars
were interesting. This far, no further,
the sea trembles, the flesh
capitulates, a dog
eats the face of a child.
CORONAVIRUS SPRINGTIME, 2020
Nasturtiums assail with color,
tornadoes on Easter in the south.
Will one red drop of Christ’s hot blood
stream in an intubated dream? Here’s a lullaby—
see the church, the steeple,
on the road to the contagious hospital
where are all the people?
One sky, another, and on the wall a clock.
In Saint Peter’s Basilica, a prayer for peace.
A masked shopper appears.
I disinfect the doorbell, my naked hands,
a tin of albacore, spinach in cellophane.
No yeast for a rise.
The old are never so old as now.
In the dead of springtime
light rain belies protracted drought.
A beach is packed, sun-bathers, surfers,
cabañas on sand, people wade, swim out . . .
foreboding attaches
to any scene at all. How difficult
it is to grasp the cost of bread, of milk.
I’m upstairs, down, in kitchen, yard,
on days lent, not given back, pooled
like our shadows as we walk.
Did it ever belong to us,
e pluribus, a country,
which counts and recounts what people said.
Phantasmal banging of pots at dusk.
How odd time is, dragging, flying—
I can’t think, can’t even dream.
Refrigerated trucks collect bodies.
I wash my hands
with no inner singing.
Potter’s Field, Hart’s Island,
Long Island Sound.
Workers in hazmat align coffins,
seen from a great height
above the graves.
A hand lies folded in the other hand,
fingertips not far from the heart.
We’re in the streets now, we’re running,
the worst would be separation,
at the root of the great lacks, separation.
If a ledger records night-falls, this is an entry.
Several memories—
a nurse’s strained face, a heap of gloves,
a toy box at the back of the closet
affixed with faded cartoon decals.
NIGHT SONG
It's winter in Thoreau's journal, a flurried wing-sweep,
remains of a hunt on snow.
I think of a local bird: a cedar waxwing's
broken-necked carcass
in the basement freezer; a tin owl
could not avert a plate-glass accident.
I revisit the cold body, see an otter pelt
hung from a nail.
On a frieze decorating a nursery wall,
the animals are vital signs, a hare, a fox,
a Matisse-like dove, its wings
nicely unfurled—
while everything I can think of wants safety.
The record extends, fragmented, detailed.
A child's florilegium is in evidence, a collection
of the most common blooms.
A riotous mess: confusion, insects drop in the heat,
how like our own, their rush to mate and die
Roses, linaria . . . which flower treats rage?
Marigold eases depression, gentian restores trust.
For each ill a remedy, a short prayer.
Phenomenal bird-song continues,
is part of the heresy
that promises earth to the humble,
the pure of heart.
The task of each day is to end,
but not before childish toys are shelved.
How wrong some wrongs are,
on a scale quite adult. No moisture
to ease the fateful drought. This is the present,
the long now we are living.
Water is another thing for sale.
I love and do not love the world.
Hatred tires me.
Can anything make it stop? I beg you,
make it stop, but that is impossible.
Less and less is the conscience afflicted.
Or is it more and more?
The thinnest moon is all tonight, O wanderer.
Kathleen Weaver is a poet, translator, and anthologist of international women poets. She is the author of Peruvian Rebel, The World of Magda Portal, With a Selection of Her Poems, Penn State Press, a biography of the pioneering social radical and champion of women's rights in Latin America. Hope and the Sea, a translation of Portal’s first book of poetry (1927), was recently published by Dulzorada Press.