Garrison - The Second child: poems

CONTENTS
NOW DO U UNDERSTAND WHAT HEAVEN IS IT IS THE SURROUND OF THE LIVING James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover1On New Terms Id like to begin again. Not touch my own face, not tremble in the dark before an intruder who never arrives. Not apologize. Not scurry, not pace. Not refuse to keep notes of what meant the most. Not skirt my fathers ghost.

Not abandon piano, or a book before the end. Not count, count, count and wait, poisedthe control, the agony controlledfor the loss of the one, having borne, I cant be, wont breathe without: the foregone conclusion, the pain not yet met, the preemptive mourning without which nothing left of me but smoke. Goodbye, New York (song from the wrong side of the Hudson) You were the big fat city we called hometown You were the lyrics I sang but never wrote down
You were the lively graves by the highway in Queens the bodega where I bought black beans
stacks of the Times we never read nights we never went to bed
the radio jazz, the doughnut cart the dogs off their leashes in Tompkins Square Park
You were the tiny brass mailbox key the joy of us and the sorrow of me
You were the balcony bar in Grand Central Station the blunt commuters and their destination
the post-wedding blintzes at 4 A.M. and the pregnant waitress we never saw again
You were the pickles, you were the jar You were the prizefight we watched in a bar
the sloppy kiss in the basement at Nells the occasional truth that the fortune cookie tells
Sinatra still swinging at Radio City You were ugly and gorgeous but never pretty
always the question, never the answer the difficult poet, the aging dancer
the call I made from a corner phone to a friend in need, who wasnt at home
the fireworks we watched from a tenement roof the brash allegations and the lack of any proof
my skyline, my byline, my buzzer and door now youre the dream we lived before Not Pleasant but True This afternoon when the bus turned hard by the graveyard,
the stones sugared with snow, I wanted to go there, underground.
Youre thirteen weeks old. Cold shock, as never wished before:
to die and be buried, close under the packed earth,
safe for an eternal instant from my constant, fevered fear that
youd die.

Relief warming my veins,
and you relieved forever of my looming, teary watch.
Someone take from me this crazed love,
such battering care I lost my mind
I was going to leave you without a mother! Play Your Hand A joy so full it wont fit in a body. Like sound packed in a trumpets bell, its glossy exit retains that shape, printing
its curve in reverse on the ear. A musical house, with more children than you planned for, a smallest hand, and fingers
of that hand closing on one of yours, making a handle, pulling the lever gaily down, ringing in the first
jackpot of many, with coins and cries, heavenly noise, a crashing pile of minor riches
And if the worst thing imaginable were to happen where does the happiness go?
The melody flown (where?), you think you wouldnt live one more day. But you would.
Days dont stop.

You toss your glove at the moon, you dont know what may come down. Both Square and Round You moments I court
Back of the head settled in arms crook, rump in my palm, the whole half a body just the length of my forearm, small face twitching toward repose. From the window lamplight or moonlight slides on the creamy forehead, the new-bulb smoothness at the temples both squared and rounding, the flickering play of shapes suggesting, mysteriously, intelligence within. And the triangular center peak, V-bottom of a heart where pure skin shades into the gold dusting of first hair, nearly
fur, like halos fuzz, more light than matter
What was it, just then, I swore to myself Id keep?
As though I could hold a magnifying glass to time
and slow its shaping us. A Short Skirt on Broadway See that girl? See that quick no-nonsense joying in itself walk? Soft scissoring, slight hitch where the blades meet, then flash apart, re-meet?
Just so I used to walk. I used to have legs.

The small trill in the gait like a half smile, tossed free at those whod look. Sel-fish pleasure on my walk downtown with nowhere in mind to go
was the best kind before I found another so ordinary I wasnt going to mention it. Have you ever been in the shuttered room where life is milk? Where you make milk? And by a series of peppery tugs, urgent frothings, symphonic arcing spurts (how absurd, how bovine) you leave yourself aside for someone else? I was milk. She was milk. Even he was milk.
Now when I hurry across Times Square, pants-suited, no one sees me.

And Im not walking in the citythat old simplicity Ive learned not to miss, not much but getting out of it, westbound, to feed her dinner. I wish the milk had lasted longer, but she got legs of her own. The Past Is Still There Ive forgotten so much. What it felt like back then, what we said to each other.
But sometimes when Im standing at the kitchen counter after dinner and I look out the window at the dark
thinking of nothing, something swims up. How Many How tall is this house? How many stories, how many can I stack and how high? How many windows, bunks, baskets, spoonfuls, jars and towels, pillows and bowls, night lights will we keep?
How many revolutions down this hill will a body tumble, flattening how many grasses? How many blades carpet the way as galaxies do sky, and how many stars, when bodies lie still, can eyes spy? How many years can each in her turn outlast my wishes?
How many, exactly?
For I want more yet more voices that pierce my heart utterly. Bedtime Story Number Two happy at the tit in the nursery while First One has a bit
of truck with Dad on the big bed
in our room. Bedtime Story Number Two happy at the tit in the nursery while First One has a bit
of truck with Dad on the big bed
in our room.

A chin of whiskers on a clean
belly, a question posed: Daddy, what are those
lines on your face? Oh,theyre just because Im getting old
I hear it coming, Two all unsuspecting in the in-breathing, jaw-working, lactating
trance, as One: You mean, youre dying? He: What? Im diving?
And she: No DYING, insisting, Whenyoure old is when
you die! For didnt I
tell herI did!that Granddad died from being old?
I almost hear his mind race, the soundless
shift to No no! Notold like that!
And the cascading (as Two snorts, pops off to burp) forth
of explanations (not enough), confirmation (sure enough)
of Ones new fear: When you die, its like, you disappear?
Had him there. Yes disappear. No longer here.
A brief silence (the suck subsides, Two lolls and sighs)
till One, awail against the sight of it,
tall door closing on us all, blurts tremulous:
I dont WANT to disappear! And he: There, there
Weeping with her now as I put Two down,
safe crib, sweet ignorance, thumb plugged against the chance
squall, the first knowledge that is anguish,
and I tuck my empty breast away
weeping and muttering, Laidto rest, shes laid
to rest, shell lay me to rest