(V, 2:"You almost say to me...")

MAX WICKERT

From THE PAT SONNETS

I, 7

When in my kitchen mood I go to cook,

I brook no interference from your hands.

A word distracts, a mere inquiring look

Can trip the steps each recipe demands.

You've learned to let me fuss alone, you set

The table, entertain the guests, because

You trust in me for banquets that will whet

All waiting tongues for pleasure and applause.

Not so our life: Four eyes read each direction,

Four hands must stir the broth we drink tomorrow,

Two hearts season for frying pan or fire

The meal of habit with the salt of sorrow,

The sweet of love, the bitter of desire-

Pot-luck of joy or perilous confection.

IV, 8

There is a darkness darker than each night

In which our solace suffers an eclipse,

A silence much more silent than each slight

Silence of love on our unkissing lips.

There is a word behind each word we say

To qualify our love, a thunderous noise

Quite overwhelming noises on our way

Which mark the pathlessness our path destroys.

The greater darkness makes the less be seen.

The final silence lets our lips declare

What word behind our words it is we mean

MAX WICKERT

In each endearment we obscurely dare.

There lies our path, which both our loves must mark,

Toward the dark behind the darker dark.

vı

Each time we meet I find you a sensation,

I feel I sense your thought, can almost tell

The rightness in my memory's conflation

Of recent pleasure with my ancient hell.

An ancient pain is buried in your sex,

A recent heaven in your eyes that flame

Glances so lucid they almost perplex.

I call your nature when I call your name.

You come to me with unsuspected treasure:

Your life is courage though your heart is weak.

I come to you with unforeseen designs:

An empty head, strong with the need to seck

Faith in a look. I speak

Of trust in blankest signs.

The sense you give is not your final measure,

The name I call you always almost right,

But never quite.

V, 2

You almost say to me: "This is the end.

I have no heart to give. Please don't exchange

Your heart for something lost. Please don't pretend

I'm saying what I'm saying for effect.

Love is not love while I feel something strange

When I say love. I've used the word before.

I've lost my heart, and I almost suspect

That to say love means merely to say more.

More what? More of the fateful first temptation

To tell the lie that everyone believes-

That every heart is lost?

This is the end, and what the end achieves

Is what both of us know to both our cost:

We are both tossed

Between our guilt and our realization

That our paths have crossed."

I've lost my heart to you. I hear you and

I almost understand.

v3

This is my rescue fantasy: You're not

An ordinary girl who loves me well

As only you can, but a whore, a pot

Of fool's gold, a disease, an evil spell.

And you, to all of this, confess, and I,

Cock of compassion that I am, forgive,

And find forgiveness easy, though you lie

In your confession. I say grandly, "Live!"

You seem to die.

Is this an act? My fantasy continues:

Your baby dies because of your neglect.

I rescue you from justice, take the blame.

Your ordinary strength is in my sinews;

Your hate, my hate; your shame, my only shame.

If you die-I reflect-

You live in that I came

To give you love and was not even sure

Whether love was a poison or a cure.

V, 10

A common story: Once upon a time

The hero and the heroine awoke

In fading starlight to a distant chime.

You are apart! it clanged, and with each stroke

MAX WICKERT

The distance grew from her to him and from

The bell to both. He rose, and she, before

The sun rose while the bell tolled Find the door!

Bravely they ran. Faintly the bell chimed Come!

And was the door where he heard her voice or

Was it where she heard his? or was it more

A matter of the chime's dim source? They ran

In zig-zags as their afternoon began.

The bell tolled Soon! and yet more distance yawned.

Night fell. The bell tolled Now! The next day dawned.

Heroic woman and heroic man

Were lost forever in a night beyond

All distance. You and I did not respond

When the next teasing bell began

Its common story: Once upon a time

There was no ever after, and you two

Were fated by my melancholy chime

To reach the door, but not to make it through.