Something in the light of this March afternoon
Recalls that first and dazzling one
Of 1946. I sat elated
In my own clothes, in the first of several
Furnished rooms, head cocked for the kind of sound
That is recognized only when heard..
A fresh snowfall muffled the road, unplowed
To leave blanker and brighter
The bright, blank page turned overnight.
A yellow pencil in midair
Kept sketching unfamiliar numerals,
The 9 and 6 forming a stereoscope
Through which to seize the Real
Old-Fashioned Winter of my landlord’s phrase,
Through which the ponderous idées reçues
Of oak, velour, crochet, also the mantel’s
Baby figures, value told me
In some detail at the outset, might be plumbed
For signs I should not know until I saw them.
But the objects, innocent
(As we all once were) of annual depreciation,
The more I looked, grew shallower,
Pined under a luminous plaid robe
Thrown over us by the twin mullions, sashes,
And unequal oblong panes
Of windows and storm windows. The latter,
Furiously washed, then left to dry unpolished,
Projected onto the opposite wall
Translucent spatterings, like pebbles under water.
And indeed, from within, ripples
Of heat had begun visibly bearing up and away
The bouquets and wreathes of a quarter century.
Let them go, what did I want with them?
It was time to change that wallpaper!
Brittle, sallow in the new radiance,
Time to set the last wreath floating out
Above the dead, to sweep up flowers. The dance
Had ended, it was light; the men looked tired
And awkward in their uniforms.
I sat, head thrown back, and with the dried tears
Of light on my own cheeks, proposed
This bargain with—say with the source of light:
That, given a few years more
(Seven or ten or, what seemed vast, fifteen)
To spend in love, in a country not at war,
I would give in return
All I had. All? A little sun
Rose in my throat, the lease was drawn.
I did not even feel the time expire.
I feel it though, today, in this new room,
Mine, with my things and thoughts, a view
Of housetops, treetops, the walls bare.
A changing light is deepening, is changing
To a gilt ballroom chair a chair
Bound to break under someone before long.
I let the light change also me.
The body that lived through that day
And the sufficient love and relative peace
Of those short years, is now not mine.
Would it be called a soul?
It knows, at any rate,
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