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The Disquieting Muses
    Mother, mother, what illbred aunt
    Or what disfigured and unsightly
    Cousin did you so unwisely keep
    Unasked to my christening, that she
    Sent these ladies in her stead
    With heads like darning-eggs to nod
    And nod and nod at foot and head
    And at the left side of my crib?
    Mother, who made to order stories
    Of Mixie Blackshort the heroic bear,
    Mother, whose witches always, always
    Got baked into gingerbread, I wonder
    Whether you saw them, whether you said
    Words to rid me of those three ladies
    Nodding by night around my bed,
    Mouthless, eyeless, with stitched bald head.
    In the hurricane, when father’s twelve
    Study windows bellied in
    Like bubbles about to break, you fed
    My brother and me cookies and Ovaltine
    And helped the two of us to choir:
    “Thor is angry: boom boom boom!
    Thor is angry: we don’t care!”
    But those ladies broke the panes.
    When on tiptoe the schoolgirls danced,
    Blinking flashlights like fireflies
    And singing the glowworm song, I could
    Not lift a foot in the twinkle-dress
    But, heavy-footed, stood aside
    In the shadow cast by my dismal-headed
    Godmothers, and you cried and cried:
    And the shadow stretched, the lights went out.
    Mother, you sent me to piano lessons
    And praised my arabesques and trills
    Although each teacher found my touch
    Oddly wooden in spite of scales
    And the hours of practicing, my ear
    Tone-deaf and yes, unteachable.
    I learned, I learned, I learned elsewhere,
    From muses unhired by you, dear mother,
    I woke one day to see you, mother,
    Floating above me in bluest air
    On a green balloon bright with a million
    Flowers and bluebirds that never were
    Never, never, found anywhere.
    But the little planet bobbed away
    Like a soap-bubble as you called: Come here!
    And I faced my traveling companions.
    Day now, night now, at head, side, feet,
    They stand their vigil in gowns of stone,
    Faces blank as the day I was born,
    Their shadows long in the setting sun
    That never brightens or goes down.
    And this is the kingdom you bore me to,
    Mother, mother. But no frown of mine
    Will betray the company I keep.

Medallion
    By the gate with star and moon
    Worked into the peeled orange wood
    The bronze snake lay in the sun
    Inert as a shoelace; dead
    But pliable still, his jaw
    Unhinged and his grin crooked,
    Tongue a rose-colored arrow.
    Over my hand I hung him.
    His little vermilion eye
    Ignited with a glassed flame
    As I turned him in the light;
    When I split a rock one time
    The garnet bits burned like that.
    Dust dulled his back to ocher
    The way sun ruins a trout.
    Yet his belly kept its fire
    Going under the chainmail,
    The old jewels smoldering there
    In each opaque belly-scale:
    Sunset looked at through milk glass.
    And I saw white maggots coil
    Thin as pins in the dark bruise
    Where his innards bulged as if
    He were digesting a mouse.
    Knifelike, he was chaste enough,
    Pure death’s-metal. The yardman’s
    Flung brick perfected his laugh.

The Companionable Ills
    The nose-end that twitches, the old imperfections—
    Tolerable now as moles on the face
    Put up with until chagrin gives place
    To a wry complaisance—
    Dug in first as God’s spurs
    To start the spirit out of the mud
    It stabled in; long-used, became well-loved
    Bedfellows of the spirit’s debauch, fond masters.

Moonrise
    Grub-white mulberries redden among leaves.
    I’ll go out and sit in white like they do,
    Doing nothing. July’s juice rounds their nubs.
    This park is fleshed with idiot petals.
    White catalpa flowers tower, topple,
    Cast a round white shadow in their dying.
    A pigeon rudders down. Its fantail’s white.
    Vocation enough: opening, shutting
    White petals, white fantails, ten white fingers.
    Enough for fingernails to make half-moons
    Redden in white palms no labor reddens.
    White bruises toward color, else collapses.
    Berries redden. A body of whiteness
    Rots, and smells of rot under its headstone
    Though the body walk out in clean linen.
    I smell that whiteness here,