The Time Traveler

Excerpt

I Saw A Woman Walking Into A Plate Glass Window

I saw a woman walking into a plate glass window
as if walking into the sky.

I saw her death striding forward to meet her,
shadowed in flawless glass.

Dogwood blossoms drew her, a lilac-drugged air,
it was beauty's old facade,
blinding,
blind: the transparency
that, touched, turns opaque.

The frieze into which she stepped buckled in anger
and dissolved in puzzle parts about her head.

	*          *          *

I saw a woman walking into sunshine confident and composed
and tranquil to the last.

I saw a woman walking into something that had seemed nothing.
As we commonly tell ourselves.

The trick to beauty is its being unassimilable,
a galaxy of glittering reflections,
each puzzle part in place.
Not this raining of glass and blood
about the amazed head.

The unfathomable depths into which she stepped became
the merest surface,
Pain and noise.

	*          *          *

I saw a woman walking into her broken body
as if she were a bride.

I saw her soul struck to the ground because mere space
could not bear it aloft.

I saw how the window at last framed only what was there,
beyond the frame,
that could not fall.

My throat filled with blood:
you would not have believed how swiftly.

Reviews

• Publisher's Weekly, July 28, 1989, p215
• Library Journal, September 1, 1989, p194
• Booklist, September 15, 1989, p137
• Atlanta Journal Constitution, January 14, 1990, N8
• San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, January 21, 1990, p8
• Chicago Tribune Books, February 18, 1990, p3
• Virginia Quarterly Review, Summer 1990, p524
• World Literature Today, Autumn 1990, p646
  

Contents

I. I SAW A WOMAN WALKING . . .

Loves of the Parrots
Your Blood in a Little Puddle, On the Ground
Self-Portrait as a Still Life
I Saw a Woman Walking into a Plate Glass Window
Whispering Glades
Playlet for Voices
An Ordinary Morning in Las Vegas
Welcome to Dallas!
Love Letter, with Static Interference from Einstein's Brain
Luxury of Being Despised
Peaches, Pineapples, Hazelnuts . . .
White Piano
Don't Bare Your Soul!

II. "I DON'T WANT TO ALARM YOU"

Marsyas Flayed by Apollo
Winslow Homer's The Gulf Stream, 1902
Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, 1942
The Mountain Lion
Sparrow Hawk Above a New Jersey Cornfield
New Jersey White-Tailed Deer
Night
Dream After Bergen-Belsen
"I Don't Want to Alarm You"
Makeup Artist
Photography Session
The Consolation of Animals
A Winter Suite

Winter Cemetery
Winter Love
Winter Solstice
Winter Threnody
Follies of Winter
Winter Wrath
Winter Boredom
Winter Aphorisms, Uncoded
Black Winter Day
Winter Noontide
The Thaw
Small Hymns
The Sacred Fount

III. YOUNG LOVE, AMERICA

Young Love, America
Night Driving
Waiting on Elvis, 1956
Roller Rink, 1954
American Merchandise
The House of Mystery
Poem in Death Valley
Flame
Undefeated Heavyweight, 20 Years Old
How Delicately . . .
Heat
Mania: Early Phase
Compost
Late December: New Jersey
Fish
In Jana's Garden

IV. THE TIME TRAVELER

The Time Traveler
Sleepless in Heidelberg
Strait of Magellan
Miniatures: East Europe
An Old Prayer
Mud Elegy
Honeymoon: Forty Years
The Floating Birches
"I Can Stand There in the Corner . . ."
In Memoriam
Falling Asleep at the Wheel, Route 98 North
Last Exit Before Bridge
Locking Through
Weedy Logic
The Abandoned
The Miraculous Birth