Becoming Light (10 page)

of their pens.

I have made hot milk

& kissed you where you are.

I have cursed my curses.

I have cleared the air.

& now I sit here writing,

breathing you.

For Grace St David Griffin

& for Iris Love

“Mostly you eat eggplant at least once a day,” she explained. “A Turk won’t marry a woman unless she can cook eggplant at least a hundred ways.”

Archaeologist Iris Love, speaking of the cuisine on digs in Turkey.
The New York Times,
February 4, 1971

1

There are more than a hundred Turkish poems

about eggplant.

I would like to give you all of them.

If you scoop out every seed,

you can read me backward

like an Arabic book.

Look.

2

(Lament in Aubergine)

Oh aubergine,

egg-shaped

& as shiny as if freshly laid—

you are a melancholy fruit.

Solarium Melongena
.

Every animal is sad

after eggplant.

3

(Byzantine Eggplant Fable)

Once upon a time on the coast of Turkey

there lived a woman who could cook eggplant 99 ways.

She could slice eggplant thin as paper.

She could write poems on it & batter-fry it.

She could bake eggplant & broil it.

She could even roll the seeds in banana-

flavored cigarette papers

& get her husband high on eggplant.

But he was not pleased.

He went to her father & demanded his bride-price back.

He said he’d been cheated.

He wanted back two goats, twelve chickens

& a camel as reparation.

His wife wept & wept.

Her father raved.

The next day she gave birth to an eggplant.

It was premature & green

& she had to sit on it for days

before it hatched.

“This is my hundredth eggplant recipe,” she screamed.

“I hope you’re satisfied!”

(Thank Allah that the eggplant was a boy.)

4

(Love & the Eggplant)

On the warm coast of Turkey, Miss Love

eats eggplant

“at least once a day.”

How fitting that love should eat eggplant,

that most aphrodisiac fruit.

Fruit of the womb

of Asia Minor,

reminiscent of eggs,

of Istanbul’s deep purple nights

& the Byzantine eyes of Christ.

I remember the borders of egg & dart

fencing us off from the flowers & fruit

of antiquity.

I remember the egg & tongue

probing the lost scrolls of love.

I remember the ancient faces

of Aphrodite

hidden by dust

in the labyrinth under

the British Museum

to be finally found by Miss Love

right there

near Great Russell Square.

I think of the hundreds of poems of the eggplant

& my friends who have fallen in love

over an eggplant,

who have opened the eggplant together

& swum in its seeds,

who have clung in the egg of the eggplant

& have rocked to sleep

in love’s dark purple boat.

The house of the body

is a stately manor

open for nothing

never to the public.

But

for the owner of the house,

the key-holder—

the body swings open

like Ali Baba’s mountain

glistening with soft gold

& red jewels.

These cannot be stolen

or sold for money.

They only glisten

when the mountain opens

by magic

or its own accord.

The gold triangle of hair,

its gentle
ping
,

the pink quartz crystals

of the skin,

the ruby nipples,

the lapis

of the veins

that swim the breast…

The key-holder

is recognized

by the way he holds

the body.

He is recognized

by touch.

Touch is the first sense to awaken

after the body’s little death

in sleep.

Touch is the first sense

to alert the raw red infant

to a world of pain.

The body glimmers

on its dark mountain

pretending ignorance of this.

I am in love with my womb

& jealous of it.

I cover it tenderly

with a little pink hat

(a sort of yarmulke)

to protect it from men.

Then I listen for the gentle,
ping

of the ovary:

a sort of cupid’s bow

released.

I’m proud of that.

& the spot of blood

in the little hat

& the egg so small

I cannot see it

though I pray to it.

I imagine the inside

of my womb to be

the color of poppies

& bougainvillea

(though I’ve never seen it).

But I fear the barnacle

which might latch on

& not let go

& fear the monster

who might grow

to bite the flowers

& make them swell & bleed.

So I keep my womb empty

& full of possibility.

Each month

the blood sheets down

like good red rain.

I am the gardener.

Nothing grows without me.

The cage of myself clamps shut.

My words turn the lock.

I am the jailor rattling the keys.

I am the torturer’s assistant

who nods & smiles

& pretends not

to be responsible.

I am the clerk who stamps

the death note

affixing the seal, the seal, the seal.

I am the lackey who “follows orders.”

I have not got the authority.

I am the visitor

who brings a cake, baked

with a file.

Pale snail,

I wave between the bars.

I speak of rope with the hangman.

I chatter of sparks & currents

with the electrician.

Direct or alternating,

he is beautiful.

I flatter him.

I say he turns me on.

I tell the cyanide capsules

they have talent

& may fulfill themselves someday.

I read the warden’s awful novel

& recommend a publisher.

I sleep with the dietitian

who is hungry.

I sleep with the hangman

& reassure him

that he is a good lover.

I am the ideal prisoner.

I win prizes on my conduct.

They reduce my sentence.

Now it is only 99 years

with death like a dollop

of whipped cream at the end.

I am so grateful.

No one remembers

that I constructed this jail

& peopled its cells.

No one remembers my blueprints

& my plans,

my steady hammering,

my dreams of fantastic escapes.

& even I,

patiently writing away,

my skin yellowing

like the pages of old paperbacks,

my hair turning gray,

cannot remember the first crime,

the crime

I was born for.

I pass to the other side of the page
.

—Pablo Neruda

On the other side of the page

where the lost days go,

where the lost poems go,

where the forgotten dreams

breaking up like morning fog

go

go

go

I am preparing myself for death.

I am teaching myself emptiness:

the gambler’s hunger for love,

the nun’s hunger for God,

the child’s hunger for chocolate

in the brown hours

of the dark.

I am teaching myself love:

the lean love of marble

kissed away by rain,

the cold kisses of snow crystals

on granite grave markers,

the soul kisses of snow

as it melts in the spring.

On the other side of the page

I lie making a snow angel

with the arcs

of my arms.

I lie like a fallen skier

who never wants to get up.

I lie with my poles, my pens

flung around me in the snow

too far to reach.

The snow seeps

into the hollows of my bones

& the calcium white of the page

silts me in like a fossil.

I am fixed in my longing for speech,

I am buried in the snowbank of my poems,

I am here where you find me

dead

on the her side of the page.

Again & again

I have read your books

without ever wishing to know you.

I suck the alphabet of blood.

I chew the iron filings of your words.

I kiss your images like moist mouths

while the black seeds of your syllables

fly, fly, fly

into my lungs.

Untranslated, untranslatable,

you are rooted inside me—

not you—but the you

of your poems:

the man of his word,

the lover who digs into the alien soil

of one North American woman

& plants a baby—

love-child of Whitman

crossed with the Spanish language,

embryo, sapling, half-breed

of my tongue.

♦

I saw you once—

your flesh—

at Columbia.

My alma mater

& you the visiting soul.

Buddha-like

you sat before a Buddha;

& the audience

craned its neck

to take you in.

Freak show—

visiting poet.

You sat clothed

in your thick

imperious flesh.

I wanted to comfort you

& not to stare.

Our words knew each other.

That was enough.

♦

Now you are dead

of fascism & cancer—

your books scattered,

the oil cruet on the floor.

The sea surges through your house

at Isla Negra,

& the jackboots

walk on water.

♦

Poet of cats & grapefruits,

of elephant saints;

poet of broken dishes

& Machu Picchu;

poet of panthers

& pantheresses;

poet of lemons,

poet of lemony light.

The flies swarm

thicker than print on a page,

& poetry blackens

like overripe bananas.

The fascists you hated,

the communists you loved,

obscure the light, the lemons

with their buzzing.

We were together

on the side of light.

We walked together

though we never met.

The eyes are not political,

nor the tastebuds,

& the flesh tastes salty always

like the sea;

& the sea

turns back the flies.

Dear Colette,

I want to write to you

about being a woman

for that is what you write to me.

I want to tell you how your face

enduring after thirty, forty, fifty…

hangs above my desk

like my own muse.

I want to tell you how your hands

reach out from your books

& seize my heart.

I want to tell you how your hair

electrifies my thoughts

like my own halo.

I want to tell you how your eyes

penetrate my fear

& make it melt.

I want to tell you

simply that I love you—

though you are “dead”

& I am still “alive.”

♦

Suicides & spinsters—

all our kind!

Even decorous Jane Austen

never marrying,

& Sappho leaping,

& Sylvia in the oven,

& Anna Wickham, Tsvetaeva, Sara Teasdale,

& pale Virginia floating like Ophelia,

& Emily alone, alone, alone….

But you endure & marry,

go on writing,

lose a husband, gain a husband,

go on writing,

sing & tap dance

& you go on writing,

have a child & still

you go on writing,

love a woman, love a man

& go on writing.

You endure your writing

& your life.

♦

Dear Colette,

I only want to thank you:

for your eyes ringed

with bluest paint like bruises,

for your hair gathering sparks

like brush fire,

for your hands which never willingly

let go,

for your years, your child, your lovers,

all your books…

Dear Colette,

you hold me

to this life.

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

author of

A Vindication

Of the Rights of Woman:

Born 27 April, 1759:

Died 10 September, 1797

—
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT’S

GRAVESTONE, PLACED BY

WILLIAM GODWIN, 1798

I was lonesome as a Crusoe
.

—
MARY SHELLEY

It is all over,

little one, the flipping

and overleaping, the watery

somersaulting alone in the oneness

under the hill, under

the old, lonely bellybutton…

—
GALWAY KINNELL

What terrified me will terrify others
…

—
MARY SHELLEY

1 /
Needlepoint

Mothers & daughters…

something sharp

catches in my throat

as I watch my mother