The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest. Barbara Guest

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      Your arms, I feel them,

      your eyes, I cannot see them.

      Day is watching me

      from over the transom.

      Day whose light is blinding me,

      as lightning on the firebreak

      of a mountain,

      who brings me a quail

      caught in the smoldering underbrush

      where the smell is of yucca

      and sage.

      Day brings me this bird.

      I must go and feed it

      with milk from the cup,

      a few drops on the spoon.

      The sirens are screaming

      in the streets.

      It is an order to take cover.

      And I, I

      must bring this bird to shelter.

      I must not be caught out

      in the night

      unless I am willing

      to give you up Day forever,

      when I join the guerrillas,

      who would like my cup

      and spoon,

      who would roast my bird

      and eat it.

Dardanella

      Those forms in gauze

      we see as arches

      the tile replaces with mountain

      the script says: As water this life

      poets go to the mountain

      followed by girls in white

      The king of the heavy mustache

      “like buffaloes these men”

      cannot find dawn in his sleep

      So agents prepare the morning mosquito

      it must be noisy yet not alarming

      Those who hear it across the valley

      in their ears closed with honey

      will feel the sting of bells

      in the palace only one vase need splinter

      from his arms only the virgin need struggle

      the boy knows now to kiss

      he will ride horses to the blue dome.

      Twenty-four veils in a pile

      and hatchoutchoui houri

      for hours and hours and hours

      the patient needy camel lifts his neck

      over the sun brick petals catch

      that is all … no vines … no miles

      … no hills … no caves in the hills …

      women walk to the fountain

      Pasha is with the Consul

      the French woman writes letters a violet eye

      toward the boy who has peed on the tile

      she forgets the name for raisin says plum

      Milk say the heavens regarding the white sand

      Bosphorus click of eel in your wave off Egypt

      tow-ridden plain of Kilid Bahr

      trees and risk where ancient bouncing flat

      is war land of the tomb otherwise lids

      Air in the arch is black

      as sighs from vessels cast

      on the shut-off tide.

The Brown Studio

      Walking into the room

      after having spent a night in the grove

      by the river

      its duskiness surprised me.

      The hours I had spent under foliage,

      the forms I had seen were all sombre,

      even the music was distinctly shady, the water

      had left me melancholy, my hands I had rinsed

      were muddy. I had seen only one bird with a bright

      wing, the rest were starlings,

      the brownness alarmed me.

      I saw the black stove, the black chair,

      the black coat. I saw the easel, remembering it as

      an ordinary wood tone, rather pale, I realized

      it was inky, as were the drawings.

      Of course you weren’t there, but a photograph was.

      Actually a negative. Your hair didn’t show up at all.

      Where that fairness had lit the open ground,

      now there was an emptiness, beginning to darken.

      I believed if I spoke,

      if a word came from my throat

      and entered this room whose walls had been turned,

      it would be the color of the cape

      we saw in Aix in the studio of Cézanne,

      it hung near the death’s head, the umbrella,

      the palette cooled to grey,

      if I spoke loudly enough,

      knowing the arc from real to phantom,

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