246
PARTISAN REVIEW
He wants me to tear myself up like a bad poem.
I am a bad poem. No one can look at me.
I keep myself like a dog on a leash. I keep myself tame.
Someday we
will
all
be together in a blossoming orchard.
Do you believe me? Old Lear and his fool.
Climb up on my lap. Let me tell you stories.
Let me sing to you, David to Saul.
I choose to go with you. I choose to say.
Dies
ist
mein Tagbuch.
This is my Book of Hours.
"I feel like there would be ants crawling on my feet."
Spring is coming.
Hold a mirror to my mouth. Do you see my breath?
I am gifted, Daddy.
Sometimes it's like a waking dream.
I killed my mother. I went to college and she died. I slept with boys
and she died.
I would like to be an engineer. I would like to be a citizen of the world.
I am still afraid of you.
I am conscripted. I am used up in your service. I am American.
A rocketship and the faces at the window are the faces you know and
it takes off into the future.
Every thread rewoven.
Am I a good mother?
Let me wrap you in fine raiment.
Kundera tells us. We go home to die.
He was no rabbi and he was no tailor. He made guns.
When his cat got sick, at first he was angry and he said "Get that cat
out of here" but then he let him sleep on his bed.
"My father cut himself and he was bleeding very badly."
Szivem.
Eletem.
I am the country where you live.
I am the angel of love.
There is a book for every need or if not you can write one.
To his brother in Prague:
Thank you for the last letter of yours. I am feeling sometimes better
and sometimes worse. I still hope that I am going to feel better in the
warmer days.
You are my honors paper, Daddy.
Boswell and Johnson.
The old king dying.
Rain.
