After The Age of Innocence

Rondeau

Lying beside my lover,
counting the blows--
Ellen Olenska's married.

Love is a lie. I hover
over the prose,

lying beside my lover,
counting the blows.

Suddenly, I discover
ev'ryone knows
secrets I thought were buried,

lying beside my lover,
counting the blows.
Ellen Olenska's married.


Virelai

Steel disuse; my heart is dead
white and cold the child I wed
and the children of our bed
know--and laugh!--how much I gave.

Wedding dresses stained and spread
and tore each thread
ethics, law--and I, a slave.

Knowing I might live as bred
and stop my head
thinking, thinking, am I brave?

To a room of books I fled
where my soul and strength were fed--
such a cage and such a shed
such a church and such a grave.

Steel disuse; my heart is dead
white and cold the child I wed
and the children of our bed
know--and laugh!--how much I gave.


Ballade

I learned today: the golden veil is torn.
Is ev'ry love a tragedy of thought?
Is ev'ry life an act? The mask is worn.
All things that please have yielded up to rot.
Passion and beauty; poetry has brought
my swollen belly, teeming with unborn,
ripened with longing, down the skull-paved path.
Lumbering clumsily, I would have fought,
native of barren city, empty wrath.

And when long dreams have seen a subtle sign
telling them to emerge from moistened night,
I feel them twist and shimmer down my spine;
I am too wise to bring them into light.
These twilight echoes casually invite;
I will not answer from my handmade shrine.
I won't go up to spoil remembered worth.
How could I labor so? How could I fight,
knowing my child is Pain, to give it birth?