Acknowledgements | vii | ||||
I | |||||
|
3 | (1) | |||
|
4 | (2) | |||
|
6 | (2) | |||
|
8 | (1) | |||
|
9 | (1) | |||
|
10 | (2) | |||
|
12 | (1) | |||
|
13 | (2) | |||
|
15 | (1) | |||
|
16 | (1) | |||
|
17 | (2) | |||
|
19 | (3) | |||
|
22 | (4) | |||
|
26 | (3) | |||
|
29 | (3) | |||
|
32 | (1) | |||
|
33 | (2) | |||
|
35 | (8) | |||
II | |||||
|
43 | (6) | |||
|
49 | (6) | |||
|
55 | (6) | |||
III | |||||
|
61 | (1) | |||
|
62 | (2) | |||
|
64 | (2) | |||
|
66 | (1) | |||
|
67 | (1) | |||
|
68 | (3) | |||
|
71 | (1) | |||
|
72 | (3) | |||
|
75 | (3) | |||
|
78 | (2) | |||
|
80 | (5) | |||
|
85 | (1) | |||
|
86 | (1) | |||
|
87 | (1) | |||
|
88 | (1) | |||
|
89 | (3) | |||
|
92 | (3) | |||
|
95 | (2) | |||
|
97 | (2) | |||
|
99 | (1) | |||
|
100 |
The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
Chapter One
Thick and Thin
Time thickens.
Sticky, taffy-brown,
the malleable gunk of family
memories, resemblances, resentments,
anecdotes thumped and punched
by a succession of urgent hands
hardens and cools, but early lumps remain,
fingerprints, palmprints, even marks of teeth.
You spend a lifetime trying to smooth these out.
Time thins.
To the original mix nothing is added
but a steady trickle wrung from years,
a faintly salty broth, not tears, not sweat.
The solution weakens until only
a feeble fingerprint of this first scent
trembles half-imagined on the air.
That earliest essence--what was it again?
You spend a lifetime trying to get it back.
Samian Morning, 1971
The gypsy loomed in the open door of morning,
bulky, unsmiling, her head wrapped in a scarf.
Her hand was out. She wanted something from me.
I don't remember whether I faced her fully.
Had I looked her straight in the eye and then beyond her,
I would have seen the Aegean like a frame.
If I had looked far enough over her right shoulder,
I would have seen Patmos lifting in a strip of light
from the horizon's lip. Over her left
shoulder I could have craned and seen Ionia.
But both these radiant regions were blocked off
not only by the figure in the doorway.
Where had she come from? Behind the house was a field.
Beyond this square green field--it was a wheatfield-
were a bent fig tree and a low stone wall
and a whitewashed hut like a gatehouse. Behind the wall
a road wound north away from the coast to the village.
She could have just walked up Poseidon Street
to ours, the last house in the row. But I think
she came around from the side, the back, the North.
I used to think the wind blew straight from Russia.
Turkey was left, the East,
and right and West was the great granite mountain.
My stinginess and resentment balanced by shame,
I gave the gypsy something I remember
probably only because she scowled and reproached me.
Whether she came back a second time
to try again, another woman with her,
is wavering conjecture. But I see all right
the thing I gave her: bright yellow, cashmere,
still with its Saks Fifth Avenue label,
a sweater someone had given me, no doubt,
for the same reason I tried to palm it off
on the gypsy, who rejected it with scorn.
The sweater was marred. A stain like a port wine birthmark
splotched the front. Who would wear such a thing?
Not I. Not she. I recall the botched transaction
but have to supply the shining of the sea,
brilliant backdrop to the piebald life
I must have turned back to after the gypsy, grumbling,
took herself away from the open door,
though I do not know if I turned to it with relief.
Ghost Jam
Even if August spread out endlessly,
not all the blackberries
would ripen in one day. But equally,
to pick them piecemeal, one by one by one,
as each in turn
goes glitteringly black upon its own
inscrutable timetable can't be done.
I would be trapped in thorn and tapestry,
the leaves and mosses tarnishing each day;
step by step, finger by reaching finger
at first upon the border,
then deeper in the cool gulf of September,
each noontime clarity
more salient with its narrow blade of gold,
first only early mornings, then late mornings cold
and misty, so the ripest berries might
shine against wisps of white,
like black beacons, if black can give light.
And having filled
hours and containers with the cool
piles of glowing fruit,
I'd take it home and mash,
boil, stir, sweeten, strain
the hot dark stuff, its stinging purple stain
with sterilized jars (ready
to be filled with jam
then topped with paraffin),
their mouths agape
to take and taste and store and save the time,
the August, then September day, the hill
sealed in hot glassware set to slowly cool.
Would. Not will .
The blackberries this summer are behind
what I remember from a year ago.
Now when I venture to the prickly hill
I cannot lose myself or fill my pail.
For each long berry gleaming ebony
there are a dozen green or greenish red
or reddish black, all clinging tightly still.
And if the picker tugs impatiently,
the seeds feel woody, sour, dry,
no crushing in the mouth,
purpling of fingers, black perfume of fall.
But even if they ripened all at once
and early, and I had
a hundred hands and hours to spare, I know
that I would hear a low
call from behind the hill:
not loud but palpable, not shrill
but irresistible,
without whose urgent summons no
berries could muster this seductive glow;
without whose pull, strong and invisible,
from somewhere behind
the cold and golden, wet and tangled hill
I'd never lose myself in search of fruit.
Without the waiting world--
I do not see it yet, do not evoke,
only acknowledge it-
how could the berries keep
the mystery of their promise, sweet and black?
Once again this year I won't find out.
I hear the call
and I am going back.
Déjà Vu
A flap in time, a hinge in space, a secret drawer, a panel,
an unexpectedly discovered island in the river,
an instant confidence that is immediately forgotten
until, unless some utter stranger comes upon it later,
years later, less by rumor, instinct, chance, blind luck, or vision,
than memory. These discoveries are the future recollected,
a bump of time scooped from hereafter and transferred to now,
stolid durations understudy, flashback of the future.
No wonder children (have I read this, heard, remembered,
dreamed it?)
experience these interludes, these hidden flaps more strongly,
more urgently, as more uncanny, ghostly, and amazing
than those of us bowed down so blindly by the weight of days,
beyond astonishment, made numb by dint of repetition.
Children, with more they must experience, less they can
remember,
itch to accumulate, take hold of even what is not
exactly now, precisely then, but somehow in between--
ghostly, prophetic, a quotidian-gilding vision
wrung from the flux, the might have been, the maybe, the
abandoned,
the oh I wish I hope I dream , arcs of transcendent longing,
familiarity with lives unlived and yet available,
the haze not yet completely clear, all structures wreathed in mist
less blinding than what daily life is dully swaddled in,
each castle, tower, and labyrinth particular and gleaming,
each episode, each conversation burnished, fiercely clear.
Copyright © 2001 Rachel Hadas. All rights reserved.