Excerpt from Otherwise: New & Selected Poems
READING ALOUD TO MY FATHER
I chose the book haphazard
from the shelf, but with Nabokov's
first
sentence I knew it wasn't the thing
to read to a dying
man:
The cradle rocks above an abyss, it began,
and common sense
tells us that our existence
is but a brief crack of light
between two
eternities of darkness.
The words disturbed both of us immediately,
and I stopped. With music it
was the same --
Chopin's Piano Concerto — he asked me
to turn it off. He
ceased eating, and drank
little, while the tumors briskly
appropriated
what was left of him.
But to return to the cradle rocking. I think
Nabokov had it wrong. This is
the abyss.
That's why babies howl at birth,
and why the dying so often
reach
for something only they can apprehend.
At the end they don't want their hands
to be under the covers, and if you
should put
your hand on theirs in a tentative gesture
of solidarity,
they'll pull the hand free;
and you must honor that desire,
and let them
pull it free.
LET EVENING COME
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn,
moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her
yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars
appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the
shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the
lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave
us
comfortless, so let evening come.
OTHERWISE
I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I
ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been
otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I
did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We
ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have
been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls,
and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it
will be otherwise.
Copyright © 1996 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon. All rights reserved.
