Jonathan Galassi - Muse

thunder or hapless

invaders could

trample our idyll

we were alive

that June morning

only we two

the raccoon

coyote and catamount

mockingbirds dragonflies

bees didn’t

know what to do

weren’t we the naiads

then darling

weren’t we the rage

Mnemosyne’s loved one, the secret sharer of these moments of joy, and also the cause of her uncertainty and pain, was a woman.

Next it dawned on him that he recognized the setting of this exalting and tormented relationship:

wade the old

roadway

through

loosestrife

and goldenrod

where the

primordial

icebox

keeps humming

all night

in the primordial

woods with the

owl as our witness

while the

inexorable

hand keeps on

winding

its stopwatch

killing our time

invading our dark

with its flashlight

The sheep in the meadow, the woods road, the unused cabin by the wind-raked pond: Paul could see every detail in his mind’s eye. He had walked there, basked in the breeze by the water, lain on the dock and watched the clouds pass overhead. Time and again he had strolled past the abandoned cabin by the turn where the woods road rose as it reached the pond. Reading the poems, he was back in Hiram’s Corners on Sterling’s farm.

Mnemosyne’s secret affair had taken place there.

Paul also thought he recognized certain words in the poems from A.O.’s lists in the red notebooks. He would have to compare them with the manuscripts later.

A third character emerged in this tortured romance: “The Great Man,” a solar deity of sorts, evoked at times with more than a tinge of resentment.

LET HIM

be occupied

offhand Olympian

let him be god

while we dither

and waver

stay with me here

in the pool

of the evening

in our penumbra

his sun can’t uncover

Or this:

THE SUN

surveys

what’s his

with purple pride

his piercing rays

decide

what gives

and lives

but I know ways

to hide

inside the shade

and while he sleeps

we’ll shut his eyes

and find

our peace in this

green glade

Paul recognized Mnemosyne’s Great Man. He had something of Sterling’s high-minded, airy self-absorption. But who was the skittish, reticent object of this no-holds-barred adoration who had to be shared with this powerful, aloof man?

Ida/Mnemosyne had written this about her:

BERENICE’S

hair hangs in heaven

only for you

I dressed it

I watched it shimmer

on water

saw it reflect

and correct

and obliterate

all of our

error

see it now

falling

miraculous

onto our pillow

glinting thread

binding

unbinding

your moonsilver

nightgown

all of it mine

There were poems about a rendezvous in a fishing shack in the Florida Keys and at the Connaught Hotel in London, poems about hidden mazes and keyholes and what men will never understand about women. There were tirades denouncing the loved one’s farouche facelessness; her maddening, irresistible shyness; her enraging self-sacrifice:

Go ahead stack his books

type for him ski

even tennis and golf

if you want to

ply him

with orange juice

bacon and sunny-

side eggs if you must

cook but don’t

clean dear

remember it’s

dust unto dust

* * *

The first part of the book came to an abrupt end without any sort of summary or conclusion, almost as if unfinished. There was a drastic shift in the second section:

LITTLE REQUIEM

the pews are

all filled with

your children

your husband

pallbearers

friends and

relations

exemplary

citizen

and I sit with

them silent and

no one knows why

no one knows why

as I toss my one

scarlet carnation

into your grave

Mnemosyne’s beloved has suddenly disappeared without warning, and can only be evoked now in memory.

In this second part of the book the poems became intentionally repetitive, desperate and at times rageful testaments to a desire that has been left unfulfilled:

How to go on

with this

heaviness all

this despair

being kind

being reasonable

practical

organized fair

when all that I

want is to shut

the door open

your locket and

finger your hair

There were antiphonal poems in italics, too, in the second part, an answering voice that Paul inferred was that of Mnemosyne’s lover, filtered through memory:

not like that

no I can’t no

we can never

find time

no lean back

and untether

how can we ever

be quiet and

breathe

how

can we ever

no lie

here together

The later poems of Mnemosyne were raw, harsh, sometimes cruel in their cold assessment of grief. This was something entirely new in Ida — the poet forced to accept loss, fallibility, mortality, brought low in ways Paul would not have predicted from her previous work:

Go your

way out into

nothingness

leave me

abandon

me widowed

go your way

leave me

defenseless

just go

your

own way

The book closed with this:

MNEMOSYNE ALONE

Mnemosyne remembers as she sits

and teases at the shoreline through the haze

what she sees

she’s seen for hours

for days

for months and years

she feels the sun’s late rays

fall on the dock

she sees the wary deer

approach the water

gingerly at dusk

she smells the ozone

after love the fear

She sees the holy eyes

that burn the dark

and in the summer flush

she hears the rain

battering the laurel

leaves again

Paul set the manuscript down. For a long time he sat and looked out the window, focusing on nothing.

He could see it all, though. He knew who Mnemosyne’s ungraspable muse had been. Someone Sterling was constitutionally incapable of appreciating.

Maxine Wainwright had died long ago; and with Bree in the picture, Sterling had seldom done more than occasionally mention her. But Morgan had known her. Paul wandered aimlessly along the Giudecca until it was late enough to call her. He reached her at Pages, as she was opening up for the day.

“Morgan, I’m in Venice, in the midst of an earth-shattering discovery. You’ll hear the whole story as soon as I’m back. What I need now is for you to tell me everything you can about Maxine.”

“Maxine Wainwright? Why? Was Sterling unfaithful to her?”

“No doubt. But this is about her, not him. What was she like?”

“Well … she came from an old Main Line family on her mother’s side. Mama apparently caused a little bit of a stir by marrying Maximilian Schwalbe, a penniless Austrian émigré; but he made everything all right by founding Mac Labs, which went on to become one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Maxine went to Bryn Mawr, like her mother, though she was a decade or so younger than your Ida Perkins, I think. I’m rather surprised you don’t know all this, Paul. I’m sure we talked about it long ago.”

For once Paul didn’t rise to Morgan’s bait. She continued:

“She was dark, petite, quite shy, but with tremendous warmth. Utterly without airs. She had an uncanny ability to make immediate connections with people; she certainly did with me, when we met at the booksellers’ convention in Chicago when I was just starting Pages. God knows why she was there — though she was a tireless cheerleader for all of Sterling’s enterprises. We started chatting at the Impetus booth and by the time I left I felt I’d made a friend. Athletic, too, a terrific golfer. I know she and Sterling enjoyed cross-country skiing together up in Hiram’s Corners. And Maxine was the ultimate good citizen. School board, League of Women Voters, what have you. A card-carrying Democrat. They had one son, Sterling the Third, who works for Mac Labs out West now, I believe. I remember her saying she hadn’t wanted to live in Aunt Lobelia’s house after she died because she didn’t want her boy growing up in the biggest place in town. Then she passed away herself more than twenty years ago, of pancreatic cancer.