The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest. Barbara Guest

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      will bring to the sandy river

      a far-off coastal lithesomeness

      when she awakes

      with seaweed in her arms

      from eyes blue and cold

      shares that beauty

Dido to Aeneas

      I love you

      I have permitted myself to say choirs

      (as if the late birds sang in branches) when for them

      in the dusk at wind set

      the garage eave yields its water cup.

      Not for us the paling light

      the white urn at the driveway,

      nor for us the palmettos and the squeak

      of tiles. The fountain at noonday cries,

      “You are not here” and the sea at its distance

      calls to a single path flanked by hibiscus,

      the sea reminds itself each day

      that it is solitary and the bather gambles

      in its waves as a suicide who says “tomorrow is

      another” an hour in the wrecker foam.

      I love you

      I am writing your name as if I were a Trojan

      who expected someone else to smooth the shore

      of souls who said

      to the great reaches of wave and salt,

      “I am replenishing as a light falling on a single tree”

      and it is wonderful like ice on a floe,

      I love you

      miracle, mirror, word, all the same

      you come, you go

      I love you

      (on my rioting lawns the plaster flamingos

      endure your wonder)

Green Awnings

      Leander walked over with a basket of peonies.

      He was eating grapes he had picked by the old

      cottage where he stayed and where there was a door

      hung with vines. He was living on grapes, training

      his muscles for that solitary climb. Somedays the tower

      seemed higher and he felt a little blue twinge

      in his arm.

      She was sewing a white heron into her gown.

      Messages came each day from her father, but

      she ignored them, preferring to think of the pale

      autumn legs of her bird.

      She put water in a vase and wished for flowers.

      It was half-past three, but the Latin sun

      stayed in the room. How she longed to bathe

      in the river. How piteous to be a prisoner

      when one was as young as she knew herself to be

      in her mirror. She was as earnest as her parents

      and nightly prepared her body. She was hopeful

      and prayed to the stars who liked her.

      She went to the window.

      Games need companions, he decided, and sat on the grass.

      He had pretended that tree was the armor of his friend, Catylus,

      and used up his arrows. The river urged him

      to practice his stroke. Later floating on his back,

      looking up at the tower, he saw an arm pulling

      at an awning strap. What was his surprise when

      the green canvas loosed, a girl’s hair fell after it.

Palm Trees

      What an arch your

      heavy burlap branches

      decide they’ll go into!

      (the first plunge did not destroy

      that green youth hid itself)

      And now freshly you start to go upward

      You want to reach a curve that will draw

      the sky to yourself and say blue

      here is your arabesque!

      The woman walks near you

      Under the sea a fern resembles you

      The heat stops and waits

      and you give nothing.

      Calm fan no one touches

In the Campagna

      “It was kind of you to ask”

      you there at the entrance.

      The cave looked even darker,

      darker than the covering leaves

      A suspicious person would say

      they guarded.

      You wanted to know if we wished

      to throw off our shields and rest

      Lay our heads in the shade

      and take from the dripping roof water

      A cupful to drink.

      Your heart was visible

      your hand open

      Why did we stare

      and grasp our pikes?

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