Celestial Music --- 15 Poems of Louise Glück

Celestial Music

By Louise Glück


I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God.
She thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth she's unusually competent.
Brave too, able to face unpleasantness.

We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it.
I'm always moved by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality
But timid also, quick to shut my eyes.
Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out
According to nature. For my sake she intervened
Brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down
Across the road.

My friend says I shut my eyes to God, that nothing else explains
My aversion to reality. She says I'm like the child who
Buries her head in the pillow
So as not to see, the child who tells herself
That light causes sadness-
My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me
To wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person-

In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We're walking
On the same road, except it's winter now;
She's telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music:
Look up, she says. When I look up, nothing.
Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees
Like brides leaping to a great height-
Then I'm afraid for her; I see her
Caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth-

In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set;
From time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall.
It's this moment we're trying to explain, the fact
That we're at ease with death, with solitude.
My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn't move.
She's always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image
Capable of life apart from her.
We're very quiet. It's peaceful sitting here, not speaking, The composition
Fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air
Going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering-
It's this stillness we both love.
The love of form is a love of endings.

-----------------------------

The Magi

By Louise Glück


Toward world's end, through the bare
Beginnings of winter, they are traveling again.
How many winters have we seen it happen,
Watched the same sign come forward as they pass
Cities sprung around this route their gold
Engraved on the desert, and yet
Held our peace, these
Being the Wise, come to see at the accustomed hour
Nothing changed: roofs, the barn
Blazing in darkness, all they wish to see.

---

The Red Poppy

By Louise Glück

The great thing

is not having

a mind. Feelings:

oh, I have those; they

govern me. I have

a lord in heaven

called the sun, and open

for him, showing him

the fire of my own heart, fire

like his presence.

What could such glory be

if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters,

were you like me once, long ago,

before you were human? Did you

permit yourselves

to open once, who would never

open again? Because in truth

I am speaking now

the way you do. I speak

because I am shattered.



---



Vespers



By Louise Glück



In your extended absence, you permit me

use of earth, anticipating

some return on investment. I must report

failure in my assignment, principally

regarding the tomato plants.

I think I should not be encouraged to grow

tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold

the heavy rains, the cold nights that come

so often here, while other regions get

twelve weeks of summer. All this

belongs to you: on the other hand,

I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots

like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart

broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly

multiplying in the rows. I doubt

you have a heart, in our understanding of

that term. You who do not discriminate

between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,

immune to foreshadowing, you may not know

how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,

the red leaves of the maple falling

even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible

for these vines.
---



October (section I)

By Louise Glück





Is it winter again, is it cold again,

didn't Frank just slip on the ice,

didn't he heal, weren't the spring seeds planted



didn't the night end,

didn't the melting ice

flood the narrow gutters



wasn't my body

rescued, wasn't it safe



didn't the scar form, invisible

above the injury



terror and cold,

didn't they just end, wasn't the back garden

harrowed and planted--



I remember how the earth felt, red and dense,

in stiff rows, weren't the seeds planted,

didn't vines climb the south wall



I can't hear your voice

for the wind's cries, whistling over the bare ground



I no longer care

what sound it makes



when was I silenced, when did it first seem

pointless to describe that sound



what it sounds like can't change what it is--



didn't the night end, wasn't the earth

safe when it was planted



didn't we plant the seeds,

weren't we necessary to the earth,



the vines, were they harvested?
---

COTTONMOUTH COUNTRY

By Louise Glück

 Fish bones walked the waves off Hatteras.

And there were other signs

That Death wooed us, by water, wooed us

By land: among the pines

An uncurled cottonmouth that rolled on moss

Reared in the polluted air.

Birth, not death, is the hard loss.

I know. I also left a skin there.



-------------

MARATHON

Part 9 from "Marathon"

By Louise Glück

 I was not meant to hear

the two of them talking.

But I could feel the light of the torch

stop trembling, as though it had been

set on a table. I was not to hear

the one say to the other

how best to arouse me,

with what words, what gestures,

nor to hear the description of my body,

how it responded, what

it would not do. My back was turned.

I studied the voices, soon distinguishing

the first, which was deeper, closer,

from that of the replacement.

For all I know, this happens

every night: somebody waking me, then

the first teaching the second.

What happens afterward

occurs far from the world, at a depth

where only the dream matters

and the bond with any one soul

is meaningless; you throw it away.



---------------

Moonbeam

By Louise Glück



The mist rose with a little sound. Like a thud.

Which was the heart beating. And the sun rose, briefly diluted.

And after what seemed years, it sank again

and twilight washed over the shore and deepened there.

And from out of nowhere lovers came,

people who still had bodies and hearts. Who still had

arms, legs, mouths, although by day they might be

housewives and businessmen.



The same night also produced people like ourselves.

You are like me, whether or not you admit it.

Unsatisfied, meticulous. And your hunger is not for experience

but for understanding, as though it could be had in the abstract.



Then it's daylight again and the world goes back to normal.

The lovers smooth their hair; the moon resumes its hollow existence.

And the beach belongs again to mysterious birds

soon to appear on postage stamps.



But what of our memories, the memories of those who depend on images?

Do they count for nothing?



The mist rose, taking back proof of love.

Without which we have only the mirror, you and I.



---------------------



Cana

By Louise Glück





 What can I tell you that you don't know



that will make you tremble again? 

Forsythia
by the roadside, by
wet rocks, on the embankments
underplanted with hyacinth --

For ten years I was happy.
You were there; in a sense,
you were always with me, the house, the garden
constantly lit,
not with lights as we have in the sky
but with those emblems of light
which are more powerful, being
implicitly some earthly
thing transformed --

And all of it vanished,
reabsorbed into impassive process. Then
what will we see by,
now that the yellow torches have become
green branches?

----------------



Parable of the Dove

By Louise Glück





 A dove lived in a village.



When it opened its mouth



sweetness came out, sound



like a silver light around



the cherry bough. But



the dove wasn't satisfied. 

It saw the villagers
gathered to listen under
the blossoming tree.
It didn't think: I
am higher that they are.
It wanted to walk among them,
to experience the violence of human feeling,
in part for its song's sake.

So it became human.
It found passion, it found violence,
first conflated, then
as separate emotions
and these were not
contained by music. Thus
its song changed,
the sweet notes of its longing to become human
soured and flattened. Then

the world drew back; the mutant
fell from love
as from the cherry branch,
it fell stained with the bloody
fruit of the tree.

So it is true after all, not merely
a rule of art:
change your form and you change your nature.
And time does this to us.

---------------------



Odysseus' Decision

By Louise Glück





The great man turns his back on the island.



Now he will not die in paradise



nor hear again



the lutes of paradise among the olive trees,



by the clear pools under the cypresses. Time 

begins now, in which he hears again
that pulse which is the narrative
sea, are dawn when its pull is strongest.
What has brought us here
will lead us away; our ship
sways in the tined harbor water.

Now the spell is ended.
Give him back his life,
sea that can only move forward.

------------------------------

Nostos

By Louise Glück

There was an apple tree in the yard --
this would have been
forty years ago -- behind,
only meadows. Drifts
off crocus in the damp grass.
I stood at that window:
late April. Spring
flowers in the neighbor's yard.
How many times, really, did the tree
flower on my birthday,
the exact day, not
before, not after? Substitution
of the immutable
for the shifting, the evolving.
Substitution of the image
for relentless earth. What
do I know of this place,
the role of the tree for decades
taken by a bonsai, voices
rising from the tennis courts --
Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut.
As one expects of a lyric poet.
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.

-------------------



Parable of Faith

By Louise Glück





 Now, in twilight, on the palace steps



the king asks forgiveness of his lady. 

He is not
duplicitous; he has tried to be
true to the moment; is there another way of being
true to the self?

The lady
hides her face, somewhat
assisted by the shadows. She weeps
for her past; when one has a secret life,

one's tears are never explained.

Yet gladly would the king bear
the grief of his lady: his
is the generous heart,
in pain as in joy.

Do you know
what forgiveness mean? it mean
the world has sinned, the world
must be pardoned --

--------------------



Circe's Power

By Louise Glück



I never

turned anyone into a pig.



Some people are pigs; I make them



look like pigs. 

I'm sick of your world
that lets the outside disguise the inside. Your men weren't bad men;
undisciplined life
did that to them. As pigs,

under the care of
me and my ladies, they
sweetened right up.

Then I reversed the spell, showing you my goodness
as well as my power. I saw

we could be happy here,
as men and women are
when their needs are simple. In the same breath,

I foresaw your departure,
your men with my help braving
the crying and pounding sea. You think

<>a few tears upset me? My friend,
every sorceress is
a pragmatist at heart; nobody sees essence who can't
face limitation. If I wanted only to hold you
I could hold you prisoner.

---------------

Unwritten Law

By Louise Glück

Interesting how we fall in love:
In my case, absolutely. Absolutely, and, alas, often--
so it was in my youth.
And always with rather boyish men--
unformed, sullen, or shyly kicking the dead leaves:
in the manner of Balanchine.
Nor did I see them as versions of the same thing.
I, with my inflexible Platonism,
my fierce seeing of only one thing at a time:
I ruled against the indefinite article.
And yet, the mistakes of my youth
made me hopeless, because they repeated themselves,
as is commonly true.
But in you I felt something beyond the archetype--
a true expansiveness, a buoyance and love of the earth
utterly alien to my nature. To my credit,
I blessed my good fortune in you.
Blessed it absolutely, in the manner of those years.
And you in your wisdom and cruelty
gradually taught me the meaninglessness of that term.

---

Poet's Biography

Louise Elisabeth Glück (pronounced “Glick”) was born April 22, 1943 in New York City and grew up on Long Island.

Glück graduated in 1961 from Hewlett High School, in Hewlett, NY. She attended Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York, and Columbia University, New York City. Glück won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1993 for her collection The Wild Iris. Glück is the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award (Triumph of Achilles), the Academy of American Poet’s Prize (Firstborn), as well as numerous Guggenheim fellowships.

She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and was previously a Senior Lecturer in English at Williams College in Williamstown, MA.

Currently, Glück is teaching at Yale.