Solving for X. Robert B. Shaw

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ orchids and pagodas painted on them.

      She fanned her face with these and made her bangs flap.

      What else? A pin made of a real seashell,

      a set of tortoise-shell combs, a rhinestone bracelet.

      More intriguing: an oblong of black lace,

      a shawl or a mantilla, that she always

      spread out before her eyes while she decided

      just how to drape it. Looking through its fine,

      close-knotted mesh gave her a view like one

      she could have got through a sooty window screen.

      Two or three hats with feathers of no color

      she’d ever seen on a bird sat carefully nested.

      Best of all, always to be admired,

      there was a brown, weaselly-looking fur piece,

      that ringed her neck and dangled down her front,

      the eyes studding its narrow nut of a head

      inky black and hard as rock, the nose

      rubbery-feeling like an old eraser.

      A little chain could cinch the snout and tail

      together, but the fixed jaws wouldn’t bite.

      There, in the little stuffy almost-attic,

      trying these in their different combinations

      before a mirror, practicing to be old

      and regal, she could lose track of the time.

      She grew oblivious to the parlor voices

      talking about people she’d never known.

      Finally, when her appearance satisfied her,

      she paced grandly down, the funeral veil

      swathing her hair, the spineless animal

      bobbling to her waist. Her mother gasped

      and clapped her hands. Her great-aunt smiled briefly,

      then looked into her teacup. Years would pass

      before the festooned girl would realize what

      her hostess must have seen: her bygone self

      and her dead sisters, flaunting these fine items

      when they were new, and later not so new.

The First Mosquito

      Still warm, still damp. Twilight.

      Emboldened to impinge,

      the whining parasite

      administers a twinge,

      a punctual siphoning

      announcing summer’s prime.

      Too small to call a sting,

      the lump she left this time

      vouches for blood she needed

      to spawn what will in turn

      go forth to do as she did.

      We might as well adjourn —

      indoors. With skin awoken

      to June so pointedly,

      we’ll settle for one token

      of such phlebotomy.

A Field of Goldenrod

      Midas, your fabled gleaming touch

      would be hard put to burnish much

      that ocher crop across the road —

      like some erupting mother lode,

      proliferating uncontrolled

      back to the treeline, solid gold.

      In truth, I doubt you could enhance

      one August field’s extravagance

      by any glitter you could lend.

      This is the wealth of summer’s end;

      an alchemy within the weed

      will flaunt itself to scatter seed,

      and summer, in a mood to splurge,

      will outdo any thaumaturge.

Anthology Piece

      Why, I sometimes wonder, out of all

      the spirited conceptions of my Maker,

      am I the chosen one? Reprinted ceaselessly,

      misprinted sometimes (I have had death appear

      in place of dearth, and yes, there is a difference),

      memorized by the multitude — why me?

      Something in my unmistakable rhythm

      seems to have taken readers by the ear;

      or could it be my undemanding scenery,

      dusty road pointing ahead to sunset?

      Woven snugly together with accustomed

      sentiments toward all that’s transitory . . .

      What could be simpler? By this time I might

      be sick of it myself, were I not bound

      to bless my access to eternity.

      As for the man who set my sky ablaze,

      he grew to loathe my popular appeal,

      but of course wasn’t able to disown me.

      Once I was plumper: seven lines, some good,

      didn’t survive the last slash of his pen.

      (You’d never know: he didn’t save the drafts.)

      Now I am all that keeps his name alive,

      pressed by hundreds of pages СКАЧАТЬ