VII

A word-wild wood striped with strange shade

My desk and chair, deep in a Russian glade

Titles

Part I   Notes I
Part II   Notes II
Part III   Notes III
Part IV   Notes IV
Part V   Notes V
Part VI   Notes VI
Part VII   Notes VII
Part VIII   Notes VIII
Part IX   Notes IX
Part X   Notes X
Part XI   Notes XI
Part XII   Notes XII

©, Acknowledgments
The Author

The iron-plated lake had partly thawed

But frozen fast, unfolding newspapers

In brittle Braille, torturing smooth plates

To maps of fracture, craquelure anglaise.

Sun focused; I stood sweating in the cold.

Sole on ice, I wavered--;--dared my weight;

And strode across the thaw's cartography.

Mooncolored patches (peril; fear) relieved

A partial mirror, temporarily

Substantial. Wet, white, walk. No vision spread

As I approached a tangled country tensed

Between seasons. Untrustworthy floor.

Fresh figure-eights of thorn unlooped from bright

Facing with darker roughness underneath

And dismal currents struggling toward the--top--!

Loud crack;--I made it. (Leaper, if

You walk on solid floorboards, praise the day

The liquid sun will sink this sheet away

In flagrant noons!) Deep breath. A crystallist,

Taking up a dry and sturdy stick,

I stooped; examined blue lines; read cold proof,

Made markings on the margin of the lake,

But slipped and stepped: the murky verso cracked.

(Dark darting bubbles; lightning's negative.)

Dark!--crackling from an ancient portrait (bled

From old enamels on a museum sled

That must have slipped and shaken over snows

Our clouds long since embraced)--shifted and shot

As puddles snapped. No runners passed these thorns;

But fragrant archivolts of evergreen

Led to an opening I hadn't seen:

Long avenue of acorns (infant park)

Near which a rude pavilion leaned, its shade

Amplified along the glassy path

From roadside cottage to lakeside hotel.

Something about the way reflections flowed

Into that glassy fragment of a road

Mirrored a dream I'd had of going fast

On packed snow--forest flying past,

Stars overhead, my sleigh piled high with furs

But cold, so cold, disconsolate--dark blurs

Of empty landscape--bleak ice, firtrees felled

And stacked for transport--inky snowdrifts, weeds--

All these rushed past; steel runners kissed the ice;

Each creak of framework, hoof-clap, skittering slice,

Invariable rhyme--my every breath

Said I was racing, all alone, toward _____.

(I plunge through freezing mirror and awake

Alive but undeniably alone.)

Bright day glared up. A squirrel sat and shelled;

The track curved back toward water but withheld

Its melt; thinned, crunched through frozen reeds,

Quartz flowers of old fallen ice,

Thin puddleglass, crystal characters--

Names written on a pane with diamond--

To hardscrabble scatters and the lake's blank tile.

I came upon my lucid antonym.

A plain reflection: no scarlet scarf,

No dandy's waistcoat-just a corduroy

Dufflecoat, warm boots, a pair of pants.

Briary clauses clung to leg and sleeve

And natural words bristled from every limb;

Arabic tangles skirting frozen melt

Bore Hebrew thorns; Chinese crystals hid

A bright diagonal. Just up the bank

I had to stop a moment by a tree--

--Human transaction. In my frail pee

A brilliant wind played with a frisk of sun;

There, as I emptied, air and I were one.

So far away from my returning dream,

It seemed like something from a foreign tale:

No runners creased this frost; this ice was bright;

That nightmare melodrama, merely trite.

I thought of where I'd read those (studying

My contribution to a leafy map)

Glass-dazzled paragraphs that loomed and burst

Green, with supple switches, liquid shades

Variegated like Antarctic streams--

--And finished; buttoned up: the ice was wet

Filed pearl, brilliant patchily.

I walked along the lake. An old path

Led through burnt fir-stumps to a road, and stopped.

I recognized a place I'd never been

And never seen before (that book again):

No horses clopped past quickly, flinging snow,

No sleigh; but something else. A cold flow

Moved almost underfoot; beyond, bright black,

A mirror's hole: no footprints leading back.

This was the same swamped ice, the same wet air,

The same faint path, the same blank danger--there,

From just that spot, a girl I read about

Walked down through reeds and chilly mist: stepped out.

(Some thing was overtaking me. That blur

Of old story felt familiar.)

The night she drowned (no "tragic accident")

She--clumsy, unpopular, intelligent--

Stopped here alone: the dark ice stretched out;

Wasted desire, thwarted heat, rote pain

Cracked with a shudder on my windowpane.

(But that was fiction! this plate floats on real

Reflective glamour, shifting to reveal

A bright black flow, a lacquer crackling

And giving way--) Time glimmered, ink and ice.

I left that dislocation in the glass;

Down garbled paths, chased the ragged right

Margin of Platen Lake through leaded marsh

Foreclosed on in the stopped economy

Of winter: startled bubbles zeroed up,

An abacus of berries clicked; the wind

Stirred tattered, dogeared leaves. The bottom land

Held undecided puddles, icelogged sticks,

Weedy statistics, blighted, written-off;

Old logs with brief, blurred entries: Lazy-fear.

Stagnation. Downturns. Muddy forecasts. Bright

Champagne is poured across the ice: the sun

Prepares a frothing celebration. Dark:

Grimmer wood. (These pearly softenings

Become our blackest midnight monolith

In Arctic relapse: carbon diamond,

Its single block a vast new-blackboard blank

That glitters up like coal ore.) Only dark

Trickles down; old murk. I plodded on

Along a grimpen slop of putative

Path through muck and ice disgorging thawed

Garbage; more pages from a newspaper;

A trampled banner  (ALL POWER TO...)

I wanted anything to point my way--

Not sodden documents remirroring

The arts of politicians (rotting maps,

Each insect-eaten leaf-state stuck to earth)--

I stopped to look for some way up the bank.

Easy to slip. Then that relaxing mire

Gave up, in scraps, the outline of a film:

You'll meet Onegin, intellectual

But cynical, a Black-Marketeer

Who trifles with a sister Worker's heart;

Comrade V. I. Lenski, earnest, brave

Young Socialist Worker, who will try his best

To set corrupt Onegin on the path

Of the Task of the New Human; Tanya,

At the factory, pressing back a wisp of hair

From her damp forehead, gazing up

Into Our Leader's portrait--his sad eyes

Are more than a foot tall; and a host

Of basic types: Old Bourgeoisie

(A padded figure with a pocket watch

He keeps removing petulantly); Time

(Babushka with a youngster on her knee--

A girl, Historical Necessity,

Who lectures her upon the People's Will);

And, most important, represented by

A handsome liaison in a uniform,

The Party. He speaks the eulogy

When Lenski kills Onegin with a wrench.

The Hollywood version (1939)

Has Lenski as a cub reporter; Gene,

A hard-boiled gossip columnist (whose dad

Owns the newspaper); pure-hearted Ann

Is his girl Friday. Lenski has it out

With drunk Gene on Onegin Senior's yacht;

Then loses job, wins girl, but at ballgame

(After big scoop makes competition snarl)

Makes up with Boss and Gene, who agrees

To be best man at happy wedding. End.

Twice punctured ice; damn. Almost slipped in.

My black sled flies on; its runners ring

On shadowed ice sedately mirroring

Gray dripping limbs. No choice, no change; all cold

Dismal waste. Then--dim, faltering-gold

Flickers far away, across the lake;

Through stinging flecks I sail to overtake

That transitive kindness--bonfire on snow

To warm the frost-haired traveler. Your glow

Enlarged and lit the clearing where my sled

Slipped to a silent stop. Reflection spread

A banquet of warm bread and English tea

As winter reversed itself, and suddenly

An open waste became halfsilvered sky,

Wet pavements, May, an unforeseen retry,

Bright spring: and that poor girl who took her life

Stepped through the mirror and became my wife.