Kenyon - From Room to Room

From Room to Room

(1978)

POEMS

by

JANE KENYON

From Room to Room

(1978)

for my family

-

Under a Blue Mountain

For the Night

The mare kicks

in her darkening stall, knocks

over a bucket.

The goose...

The cow keeps a peaceful brain
behind her broad face.

Last light moves
through cracks in the wall,
over bales of hay.

And the bat lets
go of the rafter, falls
into black air.

Leaving Town

It was late August when we left. I gave away my plants, all but a few. The huge van, idling at the curb all morning, was suddenly gone.

We got into the car. Friends handed us the cats through half-closed windows. We backed out to the street, the trailer behind, dumb and stubborn.

We talked little, listening to a Tiger double-header on the car radio. Dust and cat hair floated in the light. I ate a cheese sandwich I didnt want.

During the second game, the signal faded until it was too faint to hear. I felt like a hand without an arm. We drove all night and part of the next morning.

From Room to Room

Here in this house, among photographs
of your ancestors, their hymnbooks and old
shoes...

I move from room to room,
a little dazed, like the fly. I watch it
bump against each window.

I am clumsy here, thrusting
slabs of maple into the stove.

Out of my body for a while,
weightless in space...

Sometimes
the wind against the clapboard
sounds like a car driving up to the house.

My people are not here, my mother
and father, my brother. I talk
to the cats about weather.

Blessed be the tie that binds ...
we sing in the church down the road.

And how does it go from there? The tie...

the tether, the hose carrying
oxygen to the astronaut,
turning, turning outside the hatch,
taking a look around.

Here

You always belonged here.

You were theirs, certain as a rock.

Im the one who worries
if I fit in with the furniture
and the landscape.

But I follow too much
the devices and desires of my own heart.

Already the curves in the road
are familiar to me, and the mountain
in all kinds of light,
treating all people the same.

And when I come over the hill,

I see the house, with its generous
and firm proportions, smoke
rising gaily from the chimney.

I feel my life start up again,
like a cutting when it grows
the first pale and tentative
root hair in a glass of water.

Two Days Alone

You are not here. I keep

the fire going, though it isnt cold,

feeding the stove-animal.

I read the evening paper
with five generations
looking over my shoulder.

In the woodshed

darkness is all around and inside me.
The only sound I hear
is my own breathing. Maybe
I dont belong here.

Nothing tells me that I dont.

The Cold

I dont know why it made me happy to see the pond ice over in a day, turning first hazy, then white. Or why I was glad when the thermometer read twenty-four below, and I came back to bedthe pillows cold, as if I had not been there two minutes before.

This Morning

The barn bears the weight
of the first heavy snow
without complaint.

White breath of cows
rises in the tie-up, a man
wearing a frayed winter jacket
reaches for his milking stool
in the dark.

The cows have gone into the ground,

and the man,

his wife beside him now.

A nuthatch drops
to the ground, feeding
on sunflower seed and bits of bread
I scattered on the snow.

The cats doze near the stove.

They lift their heads
as the plow goes down the road,
making the house
tremble as it passes.

The Thimble

I found a silver thimble
on the humusy floor of the woodshed,
neither large nor small, the open end
bent oval by the woods weight,
or because the woman who wore it
shaped it to fit her finger.

Its decorative border of leaves, graceful
and regular, like the edge of acanthus
on the tin ceiling at church ...
repeating itself over our heads
while we speak in unison
words the wearer must have spoken

Changes

The cast-iron kitchen range

grows rust like fur

in the cold barn. Oh,

we still keep animalscats

inside the house, while

the last load of hay

turns dusty on the barn floor.

Gazing at us from parlor walls,
the gallery of ancestors
must think were foolish ,
like Charlie Dolbey,
who used to chase cars
and bicycles, howling,
waving his arms in the air.

Finding a Long Grey Hair

I scrub the long floorboards
in the kitchen, repeating
the motions of other women
who have lived in this house.
And when I find a long grey hair
floating in the pail,

I feel my life added to theirs.

Hanging Pictures in Nannys Room

When people reminisce about her they say how cross she was. I saw a photograph of her down in the parlor, her jaw like a piece of granite. Youd have to plow around it.

But look at this: huge garlands of pink roses on the sunny walls. A border near the ceiling undulates like the dancers arms in Matisses painting.

I put up a poster of Mary Cassatts Woman Bathing. No doubt Nanny bent here summer mornings, her dress down about her waist, water dripping through her fingers into the china bowl.

In the drawer of the dresser I found a mouse nest, with its small hoard of seeds. But also I found a pincushion, many-colored squares of silk sewn together and then embroidered. Nanny taught the girls in the family how to do fancywork. And if the stitches werent good enough, you had to take them out and start over.

And if people werent good enough, if your husband who worked on the railroad was a philanderer, well, you could move back to the house where you were born. You could go up to your room and rock awhile, or read from the Scriptures, or snip rom the newspaper the latest episode of Pollyanna: Or, The Glad Book.

You pasted the clippings into an outdated Report on Agriculture, a big book, well bound. The story could go on for a long time....

And when your sisters girls came upstairs to visit their fierce aunt, you would read aloud: Miss Polly Harrington entered her kitchen hurriedly this June morning. Miss Polly did not usually make hurried movements; she specially prided herself on her repose of manner ...

In Several Colors

Every morning, cup of coffee
in hand, I look out at the mountain
Ordinarily, its blue, but today
its the color of an eggplant.

And the sky turns
from gray to pale apricot
as the sun rolls up
Main Street in Andover.

I study the cats face
and find a trace of white
around each eye, as if
he made himself up today
for a part in the opera.

The Clothes Pin

How much better it is
to carry wood to the fire
than to moan about your life.

How much better

to throw the garbage

onto the compost, or to pin the clean

sheet on the line

with a gray-brown wooden clothes pin!

Edges of the Map

The Needle

Grandmother, you are as pale
as Christs hands on the wall above you.
When you close your eyes you are all
whitehair, skin, gown. I blink
to find you again in the bed.

I remember once you told me

you weighed a hundred and twenty-three,

the day you married Grandfather.

You had handsome legs. He watched you
working at the sink.

The soft ring is loose on your hand.

I hated coming here.

I know you cant understand me.

Ill try again,

like the young nurse with the needle

My Mother

My mother comes back from a trip downtown to the dime store. She has brought me a surprise. It is still in her purse.