by Stanley Kunitz

[mery-bast.livejournal.com]

The Portrait

My mother never forgave my father
for killing himself,
especially at such an awkward time
and in a public park,
that spring
when I was waiting to be born.
She locked his name
in her deepest cabinet
and would not let him out,
though I could hear him thumping.
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel portrait in my hand
of a long-lipped stranger
with a brave moustache
and deep brown level eyes,
she ripped it into shreds
without a single word
and slapped me hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I can feel my cheek
still burning.

Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (1786-1858) Translated by Edmund Blunden

[silverflurry.livejournal.com]

My Room

High up where I live
Right against the sky;
Pale and meditive
The moon comes here and I.
Let folks ring below,
What do I care today?
It is no one that I know-
One being gone away.

Unseen by others here
I stitch each silken flower,
Within inward tear on tear
Yet passionless: my tower
Gives me the cloudless sky.
From here I see the blue,
Star on star espy.
I see the tempest too.

Opposite my own
A chair stands through the hours.
His it was, that one;
One instant, it was ours.
There it stands, the chair,
A ribbon signing it,
As in a calm despair-
My case, placed opposite.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This poem is taken from World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse from Antiquity to Our Time ed. Katherine Washburn and John S Major 1998.