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The Morning After - Ellen Bass

01:39
You stand at the counter, pouring boiling water over the French roast, oily perfume rising in smoke. And when I enter, you don’t look up. You’re hurrying to pack your lunch, snapping the lids on little plastic boxes while you call your mother to tell her you’ll take her to the doctor. I can’t see a trace of the little slice of heaven we slipped into last night—a silk kimono floating satin ponds and copper koi, stars falling to the water. Didn’t we shoulder our way through the cleft in the rock of the everyday and tear up the grass in the pasture of pleasure? If the soul isn’t a separate vessel we carry from form to form, but more like Aristotle’s breath of life— the work of the body that keeps it whole— then last night, darling, our souls were busy. But this morning it’s like you’re wearing a bad wig, disguised so I won’t recognize you or maybe so you won’t know yourself as that animal burned down to pure desire. I don’t know how you do it. I want to throw myself onto the kitchen tile and bare my throat. I want to slick back my hair and tap-dance up the wall. I want to do it all all over again—dive back into that brawl, that raw and radiant free-for-all. But you are scribbling a shopping list because the kids are coming for the weekend and you’re going to make your special crab cakes that have ruined me for all other crab cakes forever.
01:39
I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it—— A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight, My face a featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel off the napkin O my enemy. Do I terrify?—— The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth? The sour breath Will vanish in a day. Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be At home on me And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three. What a trash To annihilate each decade. What a million filaments. The peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see Them unwrap me hand and foot—— The big strip tease. Gentlemen, ladies These are my hands My knees. I may be skin and bone, Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman. The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I’ve a call. It’s easy enough to do it in a cell. It’s easy enough to do it and stay put. It’s the theatrical Comeback in broad day To the same place, the same face, the same brute Amused shout: ‘A miracle!’ That knocks me out. There is a charge For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart—— It really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge For a word or a touch Or a bit of blood Or a piece of my hair or my clothes. So, so, Herr Doktor. So, Herr Enemy. I am your opus, I am your valuable, The pure gold baby That melts to a shriek. I turn and burn. Do not think I underestimate your great concern. Ash, ash— You poke and stir. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there—— A cake of soap, A wedding ring, A gold filling. Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air.
03:01
What happened that night? Your final night. Double, treble exposure Over everything. Late afternoon, Friday, My last sight of you alive. Burning your letter to me, in the ashtray, With that strange smile. Had I bungled your plan? Had it surprised me sooner than you purposed? Had I rushed it back to you too promptly? One hour later—-you would have been gone Where I could not have traced you. I would have turned from your locked red door That nobody would open Still holding your letter, A thunderbolt that could not earth itself. That would have been electric shock treatment For me. Repeated over and over, all weekend, As often as I read it, or thought of it. That would have remade my brains, and my life. The treatment that you planned needed some time. I cannot imagine How I would have got through that weekend. I cannot imagine. Had you plotted it all? Your note reached me too soon—-that same day, Friday afternoon, posted in the morning. The prevalent devils expedited it. That was one more straw of ill-luck Drawn against you by the Post-Office And added to your load. I moved fast, Through the snow-blue, February, London twilight. Wept with relief when you opened the door. A huddle of riddles in solution. Precocious tears That failed to interpret to me, failed to divulge Their real import. But what did you say Over the smoking shards of that letter So carefully annihilated, so calmly, That let me release you, and leave you To blow its ashes off your plan—-off the ashtray Against which you would lean for me to read The Doctor’s phone-number. My escape Had become such a hunted thing Sleepless, hopeless, all its dreams exhausted, Only wanting to be recaptured, only Wanting to drop, out of its vacuum. Two days of dangling nothing. Two days gratis. Two days in no calendar, but stolen From no world, Beyond actuality, feeling, or name. My love-life grabbed it. My numbed love-life With its two mad needles, Embroidering their rose, piercing and tugging At their tapestry, their bloody tattoo Somewhere behind my navel, Treading that morass of emblazon, Two mad needles, criss-crossing their stitches, Selecting among my nerves For their colours, refashioning me Inside my own skin, each refashioning the other With their self-caricatures, Their obsessed in and out. Two women Each with her needle. That night My dellarobbia Susan. I moved With the circumspection Of a flame in a fuse. My whole fury Was an abandoned effort to blow up The old globe where shadows bent over My telltale track of ashes. I raced From and from, face backwards, a film reversed, Towards what? We went to Rugby St Where you and I began. Why did we go there? Of all places Why did we go there? Perversity In the artistry of our fate Adjusted its refinements for you, for me And for Susan. Solitaire Played by the Minotaur of that maze Even included Helen, in the ground-floor flat. You had noted her—-a girl for a story. You never met her. Few ever met her, Except across the ears and raving mask Of her Alsatian. You had not even glimpsed her. You had only recoiled When her demented animal crashed its weight Against her door, as we slipped through the hallway; And heard it choking on infinite German hatred. That Sunday night she eased her door open Its few permitted inches. Susan greeted the black eyes, the unhappy Overweight, lovely face, that peeped out Across the little chain. The door closed. We heard her consoling her jailor Inside her cell, its kennel, where, days later, She gassed her ferocious kupo, and herself. Susan and I spent that night In our wedding bed. I had not seen it Since we lay there on our wedding day. I did not take her back to my own bed. It had occurred to me, your weekend over, You might appear—-a surprise visitation. Did you appear, to tap at my dark window? So I stayed with Susan, hiding from you, In our own wedding bed—-the same from which Within three years she would be taken to die In that same hospital where, within twelve hours, I would find you dead. Monday morning I drove her to work, in the City, Then parked my van North of Euston Road And returned to where my telephone waited. What happened that night, inside your hours, Is as unknown as if it never happened. What accumulation of your whole life, Like effort unconscious, like birth Pushing through the membrane of each slow second Into the next, happened Only as if it could not happen, As if it was not happening. How often Did the phone ring there in my empty room, You hearing the ring in your receiver—- At both ends the fading memory Of a telephone ringing, in a brain As if already dead. I count How often you walked to the phone-booth At the bottom of St George’s terrace. You are there whenever I look, just turning Out of Fitzroy Road, crossing over Between the heaped up banks of dirty sugar. In your long black coat, With your plait coiled up at the back of your hair You walk unable to move, or wake, and are Already nobody walking Walking by the railings under Primrose Hill Towards the phone booth that can never be reached. Before midnight. After midnight. Again. Again. Again. And, near dawn, again. At what position of the hands on my watch-face Did your last attempt, Already deeply past My being able to hear it, shake the pillow Of that empty bed? A last time Lightly touch at my books, and my papers? By the time I got there my phone was asleep. The pillow innocent. My room slept, Already filled with the snowlit morning light. I lit my fire. I had got out my papers. And I had started to write when the telephone Jerked awake, in a jabbering alarm, Remembering everything. It recovered in my hand. Then a voice like a selected weapon Or a measured injection, Coolly delivered its four words Deep into my ear: ‘Your wife is dead.’
08:12
It rained and rained and rained the whole night through. I thought: this doesn’t augur well at all. At noon, the tax inspector came to call. And later, in the evening, I met you. I only recognised your face on close attention. You’ve changed a lot in all these years, I see. And there’s enough been happening to me. My optimism put in for its pension. What am I up to? Not a lot. It seems The daily grind just goes on endlessly. And I have mothballed all my youthful dreams. They’re long outgrown. Now they’re too tight for me … Your endless questions … Am I happy now, Am I in love, what else has happened to me. I ask you nothing. But I can read your brow. Time was … But that is long since history. Now you’re a corporate big-shot with two sons. You chose banality without remorse. Once you were set upon a different course, But opted for the safe and healthy one. I see you, and our good old days of yore, And how time trickles through our hands like sand. And I’m no kid these days, I understand. I don’t believe in wonders any more – The splendid hopes we shared in years long past Are small and cold and very short on thrills. – I think about God’s ever-turning mills: Sometimes they really can grind very fast __________________________________________________________ Die ganze Nacht hindurch hat es geregnet. Mir ahnte gleich: der Tag fängt nicht gut an. Um Mittag kam vom Steueramt der Mann, Und dann am Abend bin ich dir begegnet. Ich hätte dich beinahe nicht erkannt. Du hast dich sehr verändert in den Jahren. Auch ich hab zwischendurch sehr viel erfahren. Mein Optimismus trat in Ruhestand. – Was ich so treibe? Nicht sehr viel. Man trottet So nach und nach sein kleines Pensum ab. Und meine Träume hab ich eingemottet. Ich wuch heraus. Nun sind sie mir zu knapp … Du fragst so viel. – Ob ich jetzt glücklich sei, Ob ich verliebt sei. Wie es sonst mir ginge … Ich frage nichts. Dein Blick sagt mancherlei. Es war einmal … Doch das sind tote Dinge. – Heut bist du Prokurist und hast zwei Kinder. Dein Lebenswandel ist korrekt, banal. Du hattest einst ein andres Ideal; Doch dieses scheint vernünftig und gesünder. Ich sehe dich, vergagne schöne Jahre, Und wie die Zeit uns durch die Finger rinnt. Auch ich bin längst nicht mehr das große Kind. Ich glaube nicht mehr an das Wunderbare – Was übrig blieb von unsern Großen Zielen, Ist jetzt Gerümpel und nicht aktuell. – Ich denk’ an Gottes sogenannten Mühlen: Sie mahlen doch zuweilen ziemlich schnell.
02:04
Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly, May gaze thro’ these faint smokes curling whitely, As thou pliest thy trade in this devil’s-smithy— Which is the poison to poison her, prithee? He is with her, and they know that I know Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear Empty church, to pray God in, for them!—I am here. Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste, Pound at thy powder,—I am not in haste! Better sit thus and observe thy strange things, Than go where men wait me and dance at the King’s. That in the mortar—you call it a gum? Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come! And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue, Sure to taste sweetly,—is that poison too? Had I but all of them, thee and thy treasures, What a wild crowd of invisible pleasures! To carry pure death in an earring, a casket, A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree basket! Soon, at the King’s, a mere lozenge to give And Pauline should have just thirty minutes to live! But to light a pastile, and Elise, with her head And her breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead! Quick—is it finished? The colour’s too grim! Why not soft like the phial’s, enticing and dim? Let it brighten her drink, let her turn it and stir, And try it and taste, ere she fix and prefer! What a drop! She’s not little, no minion like me— That’s why she ensnared him: this never will free The soul from those masculine eyes,—say, “no!” To that pulse’s magnificent come-and-go. For only last night, as they whispered, I brought My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought Could I keep them one half minute fixed, she would fall, Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does it all! Not that I bid you spare her the pain! Let death be felt and the proof remain; Brand, burn up, bite into its grace— He is sure to remember her dying face! Is it done? Take my mask off! Nay, be not morose; It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close: The delicate droplet, my whole fortune’s fee— If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me? Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill, You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you will! But brush this dust off me, lest horror it brings Ere I know it—next moment I dance at the King’s!
03:05
I sought a theme and sought for it in vain, I sought it daily for six weeks or so. Maybe at last being but a broken man I must be satisfied with my heart, although Winter and summer till old age began My circus animals were all on show, Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot, Lion and woman and the Lord knows what. What can I but enumerate old themes, First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams, Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose, Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems, That might adorn old songs or courtly shows; But what cared I that set him on to ride, I, starved for the bosom of his fairy bride. And then a counter-truth filled out its play, `The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it, She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away But masterful Heaven had intervened to save it. I thought my dear must her own soul destroy So did fanaticism and hate enslave it, And this brought forth a dream and soon enough This dream itself had all my thought and love. And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea; Heart mysteries there, and yet when all is said It was the dream itself enchanted me: Character isolated by a deed To engross the present and dominate memory. Players and painted stage took all my love And not those things that they were emblems of. Those masterful images because complete Grew in pure mind but out of what began? A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street, Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can, Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone I must lie down where all the ladders start In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
02:36
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
00:56
———A simple Child, That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death? I met a little cottage Girl: She was eight years old, she said; Her hair was thick with many a curl That clustered round her head. She had a rustic, woodland air, And she was wildly clad: Her eyes were fair, and very fair; —Her beauty made me glad. “Sisters and brothers, little Maid, How many may you be?” “How many? Seven in all,” she said, And wondering looked at me. “And where are they? I pray you tell.” She answered, “Seven are we; And two of us at Conway dwell, And two are gone to sea. “Two of us in the church-yard lie, My sister and my brother; And, in the church-yard cottage, I Dwell near them with my mother.” “You say that two at Conway dwell, And two are gone to sea, Yet ye are seven! I pray you tell, Sweet Maid, how this may be.” Then did the little Maid reply, “Seven boys and girls are we; Two of us in the church-yard lie, Beneath the church-yard tree.” “You run about, my little Maid, Your limbs they are alive; If two are in the church-yard laid, Then ye are only five.” “Their graves are green, they may be seen,” The little Maid replied, “Twelve steps or more from my mother’s door, And they are side by side. “My stockings there I often knit, My kerchief there I hem; And there upon the ground I sit, And sing a song to them. “And often after sun-set, Sir, When it is light and fair, I take my little porringer, And eat my supper there. “The first that died was sister Jane; In bed she moaning lay, Till God released her of her pain; And then she went away. “So in the church-yard she was laid; And, when the grass was dry, Together round her grave we played, My brother John and I. “And when the ground was white with snow, And I could run and slide, My brother John was forced to go, And he lies by her side.” “How many are you, then,” said I, “If they two are in heaven?” Quick was the little Maid’s reply, “O Master! we are seven.” “But they are dead; those two are dead! Their spirits are in heaven!” ’Twas throwing words away; for still The little Maid would have her will, And said, “Nay, we are seven!”
03:27