From Room to Room

by Jane Kenyon

  From Room to Room

  (1978)

  POEMS

  by

  JANE KENYON

  From Room to Room

  (1978)

  for my family

  --

  1

  Under a Blue Mountain

  For the Night

  The mare kicks

  in her darkening stall, knocks

  over a bucket.

  The goose . . .

  The cow keeps a peaceful brain​

  behind her broad face.

  Last light moves​

  through cracks in the wall,​

  over bales of hay.

  And the bat lets​

  go of the rafter, falls​

  into black air.

  Leaving Town

  It was late August when we left. I gave away my plants, all but a few. The huge van, idling at the curb all morning, was suddenly gone.

  We got into the car. Friends handed us the cats through half-closed windows. We backed out to the street, the trailer behind, dumb and stubborn.

  We talked little, listening to a Tiger double-header on the car radio. Dust and cat hair floated in the light. I ate a cheese sandwich I didn’t want.

  During the second game, the signal faded until it was too faint to hear. I felt like a hand without an arm. We drove all night and part of the next morning.

  From Room to Room

  Here in this house, among photographs​

  of your ancestors, their hymnbooks and old​

  shoes . . .

  I move from room to room,​

  a little dazed, like the fly. I watch it​

  bump against each window.

  I am clumsy here, thrusting​

  slabs of maple into the stove.

  Out of my body for a while,​

  weightless in space . . .

  Sometimes​

  the wind against the clapboard​

  sounds like a car driving up to the house.

  My people are not here, my mother​

  and father, my brother. I talk​

  to the cats about weather.

  “Blessed be the tie that binds .. .”​

  we sing in the church down the road.

  And how does it go from there? The tie . . .

  the tether, the hose carrying​

  oxygen to the astronaut,​

  turning, turning outside the hatch,​

  taking a look around.

  Here

  You always belonged here.

  You were theirs, certain as a rock.

  I’m the one who worries​

  if I fit in with the furniture​

  and the landscape.

  But I “follow too much​

  the devices and desires of my own heart.”

  Already the curves in the road​

  are familiar to me, and the mountain​

  in all kinds of light,​

  treating all people the same.

  And when I come over the hill,

  I see the house, with its generous​

  and firm proportions, smoke​

  rising gaily from the chimney.

  I feel my life start up again,​

  like a cutting when it grows​

  the first pale and tentative​

  root hair in a glass of water.

  Two Days Alone

  You are not here. I keep

  the fire going, though it isn’t cold,

  feeding the stove-animal.

  I read the evening paper​

  with five generations​

  looking over my shoulder.

  In the woodshed

  darkness is all around and inside me.​

  The only sound I hear​

  is my own breathing. Maybe​

  I don’t belong here.

  Nothing tells me that I don’t.

  The Cold

  I don’t know why it made me happy to see the pond ice over in a day, turning first hazy, then white. Or why I was glad when the thermometer read twenty-four below, and I came back to bed—the pillows cold, as if I had not been there two minutes before.

  This Morning

  The barn bears the weight​

  of the first heavy snow​

  without complaint.

  White breath of cows​

  rises in the tie-up, a man​

  wearing a frayed winter jacket​

  reaches for his milking stool​

  in the dark.

  The cows have gone into the ground,

  and the man,

  his wife beside him now.

  A nuthatch drops​

  to the ground, feeding​

  on sunflower seed and bits of bread​

  I scattered on the snow.

  The cats doze near the stove.

  They lift their heads​

  as the plow goes down the road,​

  making the house​

  tremble as it passes.

  The Thimble

  I found a silver thimble​

  on the humusy floor of the woodshed,​

  neither large nor small, the open end​

  bent oval by the wood’s weight,​

  or because the woman who wore it​

  shaped it to fit her finger.

  Its decorative border of leaves, graceful​

  and regular, like the edge of acanthus​

  on the tin ceiling at church ...​

  repeating itself over our heads​

  while we speak in unison​

  words the wearer must have spoken

  Changes

  The cast-iron kitchen range

  grows rust like fur

  in the cold barn. Oh,

  we still keep animals—cats—

  inside the house, while

  the last load of hay

  turns dusty on the barn floor.

  Gazing at us from parlor walls,​

  the gallery of ancestors​

  must think were foolish,​

  like Charlie Dolbey,​

  who used to chase cars​

  and bicycles, howling,​

  waving his arms in the air.

  Finding a Long Grey Hair

  I scrub the long floorboards​

  in the kitchen, repeating​

  the motions of other women​

  who have lived in this house.​

  And when I find a long grey hair​

  floating in the pail,

  I feel my life added to theirs.

  Hanging Pictures in Nanny’s Room

  When people reminisce about her they say how cross she was. I saw a photograph of her down in the parlor, her jaw like a piece of granite. You’d have to plow around it.

  But look at this: huge garlands of pink roses on the sunny walls. A border near the ceiling undulates like the dancers’ arms in Matisse’s painting.

  I put up a poster of Mary Cassatt’s “Woman Bathing.” No doubt Nanny bent here summer mornings, her dress down about her waist, water dripping through her fingers into the china bowl.

  In the drawer of the dresser I found a mouse nest, with its small hoard of seeds. But also I found a pincushion, many-colored squares of silk sewn together and then embroidered. Nanny taught the girls in the family how to do fancywork. And if the stitches weren’t good enough, you had to take them out and start over.

  And if people weren’t good enough, if your husband who worked on the railroad was a philanderer, well, you could move back to the house where you were born. You could go up to your room and rock awhile, or read from the Scriptures, or snip rom the newspaper the latest episode of Pollyanna: Or, The Glad Book.

  You pasted the clippings into an outdated Report on Agriculture,
a big book, well bound. The story could go on for a long time.. . .

  And when your sister’s girls came upstairs to visit their fierce aunt, you would read aloud: “Miss Polly Harrington entered her kitchen hurriedly this June morning. Miss Polly did not usually make hurried movements; she specially prided herself on her repose of manner ...”

  In Several Colors

  Every morning, cup of coffee​

  in hand, I look out at the mountain​

  Ordinarily, it’s blue, but today​

  it’s the color of an eggplant.

  And the sky turns​

  from gray to pale apricot​

  as the sun rolls up​

  Main Street in Andover.

  I study the cat’s face​

  and find a trace of white​

  around each eye, as if​

  he made himself up today​

  for a part in the opera.

  The Clothes Pin

  How much better it is​

  to carry wood to the fire​

  than to moan about your life.

  How much better

  to throw the garbage

  onto the compost, or to pin the clean

  sheet on the line

  with a gray-brown wooden clothes pin!

  2

  Edges of the Map

  The Needle

  Grandmother, you are as pale​

  as Christ’s hands on the wall above you.​

  When you close your eyes you are all​

  white—hair, skin, gown. I blink​

  to find you again in the bed.

  I remember once you told me

  you weighed a hundred and twenty-three,

  the day you married Grandfather.

  You had handsome legs. He watched you​

  working at the sink.

  The soft ring is loose on your hand.

  I hated coming here.

  I know you can’t understand me.

  I’ll try again,

  like the young nurse with the needle

  My Mother

  My mother comes back from a trip downtown to the dime store. She has brought me a surprise. It is still in her purse.

  She is wearing her red shoes with straps across the in-step. They fasten with small white buttons, like the eyes of fish.

  She brings back zippers and spools of thread, yellow and green, for her work, which always takes her far away, even though she works upstairs, in the room next to mine.

  She is wearing her blue plaid full-skirted dress with the large collar, her hair fastened up off her neck. She looks pretty. She always dresses up when she goes downtown.

  Now she opens her straw purse, which looks like a small suitcase. She hands me the new toy: a wooden paddle with a red rubber ball attached to it by an elastic string. Sometimes when she goes downtown, I think she will not come back.

  Cleaning the Closet

  This must be the suit you wore​

  to your father’s funeral:​

  the jacket

  dusty, after nine years,

  and hanger marks on the shoulders,

  sloping like the lines

  on a woman’s stomach, after

  having a baby, or like the down-

  turned corners

  of your mouth, as you watch me​

  fumble to put the suit​

  back where it was.

  Ironing Grandmother’s Tablecloth

  As a bride, you made it smooth,

  pulling the edges straight, the corners square.

  For years you went over the same piece​

  of cloth, the way Grandfather walked to work.

  This morning I move the iron across the damask,​

  back and forth, up and down. You are ninety-four.​

  Each day you dress yourself, then go back to bed​

  and listen to radio sermons, staring at the ceiling.

  When I visit, you tell me your troubles:​

  how my father left poisoned grapefruit on the back​

  porch at Christmas, how somebody comes at night​

  to throw stones at the house.

  The streets of your brain become smaller,​

  old houses torn down. Talking to me​

  is hard work, keeping things straight,​

  whose child I am, whether I have children.

  The Box of Beads

  This morning I came across​

  a box of my grandmother’s beads,​

  all tangled, and coming unstrung.

  I hardly knew my mother’s parents.

  They lived in California—the edge of the map—​

  when I was growing up.

  Grandfather fastened this necklace​

  while she held her hair.

  Looking at him in the dressing-table mirror,

  she let her hair

  fall on the backs of his hands.

  What do I know about her?

  She loved to have company for dinner.

  She sang contralto in the choir.

  When they lived in Winnetka,​

  before my mother was born,​

  she used to put on a hat, take the train​

  into Chicago, and have coconut pie​

  at Marshall Field’s.

  I went to visit when I was seven,​

  a long train ride across the country.

  One day she took me to the Farmer’s Market​

  in Los Angeles. She bought me​

  a beaded belt that said “California,”​

  and a Mexican jumping bean in a plastic box.

  She wore perfume.

  She had a kumquat tree in her garden.

  When she died, cousins sent me​

  her Turkish coffeepot, and my mother​

  gave me this box of beads.

  Here is an apricot-colored glass

  pendant. Some long, opaque

  black beads . . . some green ones, small and bright

  as fresh peas. Here is the clasp

  that held them around her neck.

  2

  Colors

  At a Motel near O’Hare Airport

  I sit by the window all morning​

  watching the planes make final approaches.​

  Each of them gathers and steadies itself​

  like a horse clearing a jump.

  I look up to see them pass,

  so close I can see the rivets

  on their bellies, and under their wings,

  and at first I feel ashamed,

  as if I had looked up a woman’s skirt.

  How beautiful that one is,​

  slim-bodied and delicate​

  as a fox, poised and intent​

  on stealing a chicken​

  from a farmyard.

  And now a larger one, its​

  tail shaped like a whale’s.

  They call it sounding

  when a whale dives,

  and the tail comes out of the water

  and flashes in the light

  before going under.

  Here comes a 747,​

  slower than the rest,​

  phenomenal, like some huge​

  basketball player​

  clearing space for himself​

  under the basket.

  How wonderful to be that big​

  and to fly through the air,​

  and to make such a big shadow​

  in the parking lot of a motel.

  The First Eight Days of the Beard

  1.A page of exclamation points.

  2.A class of cadets at attention.

  3.A school of eels.

  4.Standing commuters.

  5.A bed of nails for the swami.

  6.Flagpoles of unknown countries.

  7.Centipedes resting on their laurels.

  8. The toenails of the face.

  Changing Light

  Clouds move over the mountain,​

  methodical as ancient​r />
  scholars.

  Sun comes out​

  in the high pasture where​

  cows feel heat

  between their shoulder blades.

  The Socks

  While you were away​

  I matched your socks​

  and rolled them into balls.​

  Then I filled your drawer with​

  tight dark fists.

  The Shirt

  The shirt touches his neck​

  and smooths over his back.

  It slides down his sides.

  It even goes down below his belt—​

  down into his pants.

  Lucky shirt.

  Starting Therapy

  1

  The psychiatrist moves toward me,​

  a child’s sweater in his hands.

  It’s my old white cardigan.

  He’s going to make me wear it.

  He puts my arm into one of the sleeves.​

  He puts it on me backwards.

  This thing is a straightjacket!

  Anybody in his right mind can see​

  this sweater doesn’t fit.

  2

  Thinking someone is at the door​

  I open it to find a small brain​

  hovering over the porch.

  It won’t come in and it won’t go away.

  I let the screen door slam.

  It sounds like the door to the apartment​

  where I used to live.

  No, it’s the door to my parents’ house​

  where we lived when I was four.

  Colors

  (for S.D.)

  Sometimes I agreed with you​