Read Plundered Hearts for Free Online Page B

back,
                   Had truly returned
        And come to the chamber of the dead.
        My brother, pale as a grain fallen
    On a cloth, recognized him and stood, head bowed,
    Intent on his part. Then the god took him up
        To Hercules whose quiver behind
                   Is a crown of stars.
        But the great Serpent coiled in night,
        As the boy approached, wound itself round
    The hero’s outstretched arm who was to hold
    Him fast by his side, a friend to his labors.
        So the boy in error was taken
                   Further up, farther
        Away, too far to be seen by men.
        But I have, there between the bowstring
    And the shaft, whenever I look up for a line.
    Exile—a boy into death, the bit of life
        Stranded in a song, or its singer—
                   Is the end of our
        Belief. It comes to pass, the last change
        As the first, from a stream of star-shot
    Wonderment that falls down to our home on earth.

from
THE REST OF THE WAY
1990
MEDEA
IN TOKYO
    Already in place, her tears are chainlink gold,
    Her grief a silken streamer of “blood” that friends
    Draw slowly from her mouth while she is told
    A rival has worked her magic. Who’s the witch?
    The unseen girl will have her hour, then ends
    Up on fire. And the star’s in fact an old
    Man, with clay breasts and trailing robe
    Forty pounds of mirror flints enrich,
    Who never says a word I comprehend.
    What happens when the language is a mask,
    And the words we use to hush this up have failed?
    The chorus—beekeepers with samisens—ask
    That question (I think) over and over again.
    Is tragedy finally wrenched from fairy tale
    When we ought to understand but can’t pretend?
    She doesn’t hear a thing. Her dragon cart—
    The bucket of a sleek hydraulic lift—
    Sways above us all. By now the part
    Has worn out her revenge. We’re made to feel
    Even she is beyond the spell of speech, the gift
    Of fate she gave the others. But a moral starts
    To echo. The children’s screams. And to each wheel
    A body’s tied with ribbons, pale and stiff.
    The words had made no sense, but the sword was real.
THE RENTED HOUSE
    The faintly digital click of the overhead fan
                   stroking what was left of the dark
        had finally given way to a rooster alarm.
                             Not that we needed one.
    We’d been kept awake all night by cats, cats
                   in the crawlspace, in the yard,
        up and down the back lane, until it seemed
                             they were in your head,
    their guttural chittering, then a courting sound—
                   more like tires spinning on ice—
        a sort of erotic simmer that would mount
                             to a wail in heat, a wailing,
    one pair, and soon after another, the same,
                   sex shrieking all around and under us,
        who hadn’t touched, or barely spoken, for days.
                             When I leaned over you
    to bang on the window, your back was hot on my chest.
                   I banged louder, longer, less to scare
        the cats away than to feel your heat, the flesh
                             and an inch above the flesh,
    while listening to theirs, though theirs hurt less
                   because the pain thrilled, you could hear it,
        the now worried tom helplessly caught in her
                             until she’d had enough.
    And then they set to fighting. Again and again
                   I’d be getting out of bed to stamp or shout
        into the dark, and they would stop for a minute
                             before turning on each other
    with a