Dana Gioia - 99 Poems

the sun and open spaces … there were no walls!

I had forgotten what the world was like.

I started crying. Can you picture me

standing there stunned and squinting like a mole

someone had flushed out of the ground to kill?

What a damn fool I was — stumbling around

in prison workclothes on an open road.

I tried to hitch a ride, and right away

a lady picked me up. She said I looked

just like her son in Tulsa. She talked a lot.

There’s always someone stupider than you.

I ditched the car at nightfall in a field,

and walked the six miles home. I knew the way.

VIII.

I walked up to the house, then went around.

The front door was for company, not me.

I went up to the kitchen porch and knocked.

I was afraid that she’d look old and sick,

that I would lose my nerve, but then she answered,

looking the same and acting as if she

were not at all surprised to see me there.

She looked the same, and yet I realized

that moment how I had forgotten all

the features of her face. More likely I

had never really noticed them at all—

her freckled skin, the bump along her nose,

the narrow tight-drawn lips which formed a smile

that I had seen before, not just on her.

It was the smile I greeted in the mirror.

I never knew till then where I had learned it.

How strange the people we are closest to

remain almost invisible to us

until we leave them. Then, on our return,

we recognize the faces in our dreams.

I saw her calmly now. And what I saw

was an old woman close enough to death.

How pointless my revenge seemed in that moment.

Nothing could redeem the past — or me.

I had no right to come and stand in judgment.

IX.

These thoughts took just a moment, then I heard

“I’ll set another place for you at supper.”

She had a way about her, see? A way

of putting everyone back in their place,

no matter who they were or what they wanted.

She knew that she had won. And didn’t care.

That’s when I noticed she had set three places.

Reading the question on my face, she said,

“I have another boy who lives here now.”

I told her that I wanted to wash up,

but went instead back to the extra bedroom,

and walked right in.

I guess I must have scared him.

He was a scrawny kid with short red hair,

not more than twelve with narrow mousy eyes.

He sat there on the rug, his mouth half-open,

his baseball cards laid out across the floor.

I knew the room. It hadn’t changed at all.

The blistered paint, the battered bed and desk

still moaned about the cost of charity.

He crouched there looking at me silently.

Watching him tense, I knew how many times

that angry men had come to him before.

He had the wisdom of the unloved child

who knew he had been damned by being born.

I closed the door behind me. Frantically

he gathered up his cards to stash away.

They must have seemed more precious than his life.

As I came close, I didn’t say a word

but took the cash I’d stolen from the guard

and held it out, “Take this and walk to town.”

He knew that money never comes for free.

He took it anyway and slipped outside.

I walked back to the kitchen quietly

and saw her busy working at the sink.

She must have heard me come into the room,

but wouldn’t turn to look me in the face.

And I came up behind her all at once.

Then it was over — over just like that.

I felt a sudden tremor of delight,

a happiness that went beyond my body

as if the walls around me had collapsed,

and a small dark room where I had been confined

had been amazingly transformed by light.

Radiant and invincible, I knew

I was the source of energy, and all

the jails and sheriffs could not hold me back.

I had stayed strong. Finally, I was free.

But as I stood there gloating, gradually

the darkness and the walls closed in again.

Sensing the power melting from my arms,

I realized the energy I felt

was just adrenaline — the phony high

that violence unleashes in your blood.

I saw her body lying on the floor

and knew that we would always be together.

All I could do was wait for the police.

I had come home, and there was no escape.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” he said. “Such nonsense.

But years ago I actually saw one.”

He seemed quite serious, and so I asked.

It happened almost forty years ago.

The world was different then — not just for ghosts—

slower, less frantic. You’re too young to know

life without cell phones, laptops, satellite.

You didn’t bring the world with you everywhere.

Out in the country, you were quite alone.

I was in love with Mara then, if love

is the right word for that particular

delusion. We were young. We thought we could

create a life made only of peak moments.

We laughed. We drank. We argued and made love.

Our battles were Homeric — not Homer’s heroes

but his gods, petty, arrogant Olympians

thundering in their egotistic rage.

Mara was brilliant, beautiful, refined.

She’d walk into a room dressed for the evening,

and I would lose a breath. She seemed to shine

as movie stars shine, made only of light.

And did I mention she was rich? And cruel?

Do you know what it’s like to be in love

with someone bad? Not simply bad for you,

but slightly evil? You have to decide

either to be the victim or accomplice.

I’m not the victim type. That’s what she liked.

I envied her sublime self-confidence.

She could freeze someone with a single sentence,

too witty to be rude but deeply wounding,

impossible to deflect or forget.

If I sound slightly bitter, please understand,

it is myself I now despise, not Mara.

She simply recognized what I desired.

Her uncle owned a house up in the Berkshires,

not just a summer house, a country manor,

three stories high with attics, basement, turrets,

surrounded by great lawns and sunken gardens,

hundreds of wooded acres whispering wealth.

We came up for a few days in late autumn,

driving through bare woods under a gray sky,

the landscape still, no birds, barely a breeze,

hushed as the hour after heavy snowfall.

The house had been vacated since September.

I had imagined it as dark and gothic,

cloaked in shadow like something out of Lovecraft,

but the decor was opulently cozy,

a proper refuge for a Robber Baron,

stuffed with objets to certify his status,

though slightly shabby from a century’s use.

The art was grand, authentic, second rate.

Florentine bronzes, Belgian tapestries,

carved stonework pried from bankrupt Tudor manors,

and landscapes by the minor Barbizons.

Nothing quite fit together. I suspect

sumptuous excess was the desired effect,

a joyful shout to celebrate success—

good taste be damned — let’s just indulge ourselves

and revel like a child who greets his playmates

by emptying his toy chest on the floor.

What fun is wealth if no one notices?

Mara seemed to think so. What did I know?

I’d never seen the rich up close before.

While Mara showered, I explored the cellars,

searching a maze of mildewed storage rooms

until I found a faux medieval door,

flanked by a pair of somber wooden saints.

You should have seen the wine her uncle owned—