Kathleen Weaver


Letter to Dusk
 

Small tulips, disquiet in a mirror, nothing new,
yet I need to write you, to tell you
I've lost some map I used to own,
some bulletin or report from a distant front.
Rolled dice of weathers, flawed materials,
a conscientious count
of elephants in the Amboseli.
Dust obscures their search for water before the rains.

One of them fell behind, went on,
far from the herd’s protection.
I've never been there, will never go there—
not far from here is everything now,
and the border river
where people drown.

I feel your presence near me,
aloof, withdrawing, dimming the trees.
A penitential mood is in the house.
I’ve been reading
about a besieged town, tell me
if you’ve encountered it in your travels,
the bombardments, the lack of water, someone
had a radio on.


Permanently on the Verge of Tears

There's a small trash can at the edge of the screen,
at the bottom, near the beveled metal.
Drag the world to it,
let go, don't cling.
Empty the biota from the containing vessel.
And the pictures, the musics,
the Thespian masks.
Do it quickly, thy will be done.
Fulfill what has been prophesied.

The dramatis personae won’t be back,
nor will the golden apples we were told not to touch.
The stage hands are still running around,
clearing away the stage business,
the books, the mirrors, the pleated fans,
the lamentations and plot turns.
They are carting off the backdrops,
the coulisse trees, the dawn.

The stage is being curtained.
The marchers disappear,
and the children waving tiny flags.
Yet here they are again, as before.
I didn’t mean it when I said the actors would not be back.

Of course you can't trash an entire world,
no single person can do that. It takes a village,
or several nations, or a comet, an oil cartel.
A few inventions might do it,

in hardly any time at all.
We’re stuck with the contradictions, the alarms.
Will a punitive spirit rule the world?
A plaintiff turns to face the judge,
who does not speak or sigh or frown.

Kathleen Weaver is a poet, biographer, translator, and anthologist of international women poets. Too Much Happens, a volume of poems, was published by The Post-Apollo Press. Peruvian Rebel, a biography of the Peruvian poet and pioneering champion of women’s rights, Magda Portal, was published by Penn State University Press. Dulzorada Press recently brought out her translation of Magda Portal’s first book, Hope and the Sea. Her poetry has appeared in Arts & Letters, Under a Warm Green Linden, Chariton Review, Cimarron Review, Salamander, and other journals. Her poetry translations, especially of women poets, and of Cuban poets Nancy Morejón, Fayad Jamís, Eliseo Diego, Samuel Feijóo, and Cintio Vitier, have appeared in book-length form and in journals. She lives in Berkeley with her husband, Bob Baldock.

ISSN 2472-338X
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