Ilene Starger
Photo: Lois Greenfield
(USA)
AUBADE
See, it’s all right:
so much dark blue breaking
and entering
where it has no business being.
Be grateful nonetheless.
A cacophony of clocks,
their poorly kept secrets:
minutes conspire
with eternity, but look,
it’s all right.
A symphony of stars late
for morning prayers,
when just one prayer will do:
‘More love awaits,
of that we are certain.’
One dark blue fragment –
special delivery –
insists on gaining entry.
Clocks, stars, pay
homage to what has gone;
what continues.
Already, dimmed specks
poised in the late sky –
a pointillist’s vision –
unpack instruments
for their concert
this evening.
DREAM
There was a carpeting
of lawn,
plush and green;
there was a canopy
of moon;
a panoply of stars,
elusive things.
The dream went on.
We were half-asleep,
conspiring
with the night,
whose silent whisper
spoke of love.
There was a bed
of sky;
there was a raft
of sea,
bluish-green.
We were children
in the dark,
conspiring
with the night.
We trusted
in its vow
to keep us
from truth’s light
as we clung
to love,
elusive thing.
BEGINNING
You were certain of things – no peace in this lifetime;
people, unchanging; your need to be alone;
my hair leading your hand on
as it brushed my neck, warm against
your chest of taut beliefs. Our first May night
masqueraded as August: drunken sky, wet
and stiff, too many clothes, inadequate
intervals of breath. I hoped you’d stop
talking and kiss me where I wanted
to be kissed. Spurned by silence,
I pinned myself to your sleeve;
wondered if you were right
about my wanton hair, the state
of the world, your unromantic soul.
FOR MEDEA, WAKING
Sleep’s black respite; blue, the rising day:
blurred fact of loss, fresh salt, in your eye,
on your tongue. Flung from the marriage
bed, unmoored, face newly ravaged
by revenge; yet, in cauterizing rage,
strange freedom, dimly lit. Bereft
by your own hand, you will not bathe
your sons again; never touch dear tendrils
of jet hair, violet-streaked. Wince
as you inhale desire’s candied scent: once,
blended with Jason’s pungent seed,
it bled you of youth. Wild orchids,
white beneath chariot wheels; history’s archives
and your heart brim with endings: burnished,
endured. If men, coarse comrades
in gray wars, wield swords
which split fig-like flesh, and build
cities upon golden greed, or bile,
women too yield violent secrets:
quiet steel in bodily secretions
of water, fire, milk, birth; bitter paradox
for those who feed on them most
often. You, weary exile, forced to choose
between lover’s blaze and mother’s benign
kiss: recall, as you weep, supine
on crimson sheets, how the down on your arm
rose, sunlit fleece, with his stroke; harm
not yet done. Children could be soothed;
night’s blade, sheathed; grief’s stain, cleansed.
TIDES
Under striped awning sky, children fill
tiny pails with sand: cities, built as shovels click
against shells hidden in dirt; new civilizations,
forged in the undertow. I watch out for these children;
mothers, reclining, can’t keep them afloat. Absent,
weekday fathers: cries of ‘Daddy, come look at me’
flail about. Once, swallowed by dreams,
I saw day, buoyant, sink into sundown;
my face and shoulders shone, shame’s
heat, as I waited for Father to find
me beautiful. I poured sand into pails, stand-ins for
his eyes, and planned new infrastructures of the heart.
Drunk on summer solitude, children slip,
with their castles, into an ocean’s outstretched arms.
THE WEIGHT OF WATER
Virginia, stones in pockets, laughs
with the river; bends halfway down
to meet its dark, brazen splash.
The family china is lonely: no solace
in spare rooms or morning’s untidy sound.
Virginia, stones in pockets, laughs
at her own daring; wades deeper, past
the river’s door; gently extends her hand
to meet its dark, brazen splash.
Ghosts in water: her children; Leonard’s face,
lined with traces of the writer’s wound.
Virginia, stones in pockets, laughs
at her own selfishness. She has not kept pace
with others. She craves river; will descend
to meet its dark, brazen splash.
She might at last be light; might unlace
her life, rich with river, deep and brown.
Virginia, stones in pockets, laughs
to meet its dark, brazen splash.
EQUILIBRIUM
If, inconsolable, we come weeping;
if, unquiet, we ask for muted sun;
if, spinning, we seek balance,
do not deny these contradictions.
In middle age, our perfect recall
of childhood’s sting astonishes,
and so we wait for doors,
unyielding, to pry themselves
open; for playground bullies
to be kind; for mothers, fathers
to carry our eager faces,
already pressed and faded,
forever in their wallets,
plastic; peeling like the moon.
__________________________
Ilene Starger is a New York-born poet. Her work has been published in Bayou, Oyez Review, Georgetown Review, Tributaries, Folio, Oberon, Paper Street, Second Wind, Tar Wolf Review, Erato, Grasslimb, Manzanita, Poesia, Ibbetson Street, Iodine, Phoenix, The New Renaissance, The Same, and online in the Tupelo Press Poetry Project and The Istanbul Literary Review. She received Honorable Mentions in the 2004 Ann Stanford Prize sponsored by the Southern California Anthology, and in the 2005 New Millennium Writings Competition; she was a finalist in the 2005 Ann Stanford Prize. She received Honorable Mentions in the 2006 Oliver Browning Poetry Competition sponsored by Poesia/Indian Bay Press, and in the 2007 Poetry Competition sponsored by Writecorner Press. Finishing Line Press published her chapbook Lethe, Postponed in September 2008. She is currently putting together her next collection of poems, and is the co-creator of Elusive Things, a classical song cycle composed by Eric Shimelonis based on ten of her poems. Elusive Things, sung by F. Murray Abraham and played by the musicians of Voice of the City Ensemble, had its premiere at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall on January 15, 2010.