“
Approaching Elegy
It's hard to believe you are dying: like looking
at a Jamesian scene, skipping past happiness
to a garden bench beyond the trees. You fill the form
of heroine: you sit in your black dress, too tired to imagine
the rest of yourself.
An old suitor appears, grabs you possibly
too forcefully by the wrists (he is still impossibly
in love—). You disengage your wrists. He leans forward, looks
into your eyes, which you close—as if you were all by yourself.
He moves closer, talking very fast about happiness.
He places his cloak on your shoulders, imagines
he'll rescue you. Around you, forms
grow darker: house, branch, hydrangea. Above you, freckled
expanses of leaves form
the beginnings of barbed, lopsided shrouds—a possible
solace. If only his kiss could please you, I wouldn't need to imagine
past the clean architecture of the story. And perhaps it is wrong to look
past that. Wrong to ask about happiness.
Past midnight, he continues to offer himself.
Before, he had offered aimless passion, but now (you see it for yourself)
he has an idea: he points into the darkness. He is grave, formal.
The dark has swallowed the long shadows of the oaks (though not
your unhappiness)
—and it is about to swallow you. Soon, it will no longer be possible
(there is just one more page to turn) for me to look
through your eyes, so I would like to imagine
for you: something past tragedy. Just as I would like to imagine
that we are not in danger, that we have selves
more solid than stars, that we are safe in the pages of books we can
reopen to look
at each other. Except that we are not women formed
of words, but of impossible
longings. What was it that you wanted besides happiness?
You are dying. I have no ideas about happiness
and no patience to imagine
it possible.
Soon you will not be the heroine; you will not be yourself.
And it's not that you've lost the formula; your form
is losing you. Look
at how brave you are: I imagined the great point was to be happy,
as happy as possible
with the quick forms that imagine us—but the last time I looked
there you were—distant and bright in the not so blue darkness,
imagining yourself.
”
”