Theodora Goss: Poems

In the Snow Queen’s Castle
by Theodora Goss

I. Kay

Kay waits in the castle of ice, sitting
at the center of a lake made of ice, surrounded
by the pieces of a puzzle also made of ice —
everything in the Snow Queen’s castle is frozen,
everything is blue with cold, including
Kay himself. Although he still has a small fire
around his heart: you can see it through his translucent
blue chest. It has almost flickered out.

He still remembers what she told him when she drove
past in her sleigh drawn by seven white reindeer:
How do you know that you are truly loved?
If I took you now to my castle made of ice,
where the northern lights flicker above my bedroom,
where it is so cold your breath would turn to frost,
would anyone try to rescue you?
Gerda would come, he told her. Gerda loves me.
She would always come, even if she lost her shoes,
even by foot over Finland.

The Snow Queen threw back her head and brittle laughter
broke in the air, falling to the ground like snowflakes,
each perfectly different from every other.
No one is loved like that, my dear. Not even you,
with your blue eyes, so sincere,
your brown hair arching over your forehead
like a pair of swallows’ wings.
I’ll prove it to you, he said, hitching his sleigh
to hers. A moment later they were flying.

Now he sits on the lake of ice, trying to solve
the puzzle she set him, which is supposed to spell
the word eternity, but shattered long ago
into frozen shards, indecipherable.
If you can put it together again, she told him,
I will give you a pair of skates so you can return
to Copenhagen. Which is, he thinks, the only way
he will ever leave the Snow Queen’s castle.
He is realizing what a stupid boy he has been
to think anyone loved him so much, even Gerda,
who is no doubt still at home, learning
how to embroider various flowers on linen
from her grandmother.

He knows no one will come
and the fire in his chest, the small bit of fire
that is left around his heart,
will flicker out.

II. Gerda

Damn him, Gerda thinks, standing in the front hall
of the Snow Queen’s castle, her feet frostbitten
from walking over Finland.
Perhaps she should never have come, perhaps
she should have left him with that bleached strumpet.
She sighs, then walks forward on aching feet
to rescue the boy with blue eyes and hair
like swallows’ wings.

(The image is an illustration for “The Snow Queen” by Margaret Tarrant.)

Rapunzel
by Theodora Goss

When she learns her history, when she is told
by the vindictive witch that her mother sold
her for a mess of rampions,

she will cut off her hair, the long gold strands
lying in her hands, effective locking herself
into the tower, alone,

wanting no supernatural chaperone,
no prince to rescue her, wanting nothing
except her own mother,

the one thing she cannot have. Rapunzel will sit
with her shorn hair on a chair at the center of the room,
head bowed in mourning.

The birds will bring her food, she will drink the rain,
the wind in the trees will sing to her again,
but who will comb her hair

until it grows once more in a golden tangle,
long enough to reach the ground, so the girl
can escape her grief and pain?

(The image is an illustration for “Rapunzel” by Emma Florence Harrison.)

The Bear’s Wife
by Theodora Goss

I went to the bear’s house
reluctantly: my father would have a pension
for his old age, my mother a pantry filled
with food for winter. My brothers would go to school,
my little sister — all she wanted, she said,
was a dolly of her very own. I went
dutifully. Like a good daughter.

In the bear’s house there were carpets with dim, rich colors
from Isfahan, and mahogany furniture,
and brocade curtains. More bedrooms than I could count,
a ballroom in which I was the only dancer,
a library filled with books. And electric lights!
But I chose a candle to see him by — the bear,
my husband. The wax dripped.

He woke, reproaching me, and it was gone —
house, carpets, furniture, curtains, books,
even the emptiness of empty rooms.
I was alone in the forest.

If I returned to my father’s house, they would greet me
with cakes and wine. My mother would draw me aside.
This is what comes of marrying a bear, she would say,
but now it’s over. You can live a normal life,
marry again, have children that are not bears,
become a respectable woman.

There was the path back to my father’s house.
Instead I turned toward the pathless forest,
knowing already what the choice entailed:
walking up glass mountains in iron shoes,
riding winds to the corners of the earth,
answering ogres’ riddles. And at the end
the bear, my husband, whom I barely knew.
And yet I walked into the dangerous trees,
knowing it was my life, knowing I chose it
over safety, maybe over sanity. Because it was mine,
because it was life.

(The image is an illustration by John Bauer.)

The Marshes
by Theodora Goss

The marshes call,
the marshes so wild,
all yellow under the moon,
and the small green frogs
raise their heads from the slime
to croak a beckoning tune.

The marshes call
with a sibilant voice,
the hiss of settling mire,
and they whisper a promise
that is no promise,
a negative heart’s desire.

I answer, alone
while the moon shines on me,
insisting I will not come,
but the night wears away,
and the brain grows weary,
and the heart goes numb.

(The image is Marshland by W. Menzies Gibbs.)

Why I Write Poetry
by Theodora Goss

If I didn’t commit this crime
of putting words on paper one after the other
that either do or do not rhyme,
that have a surreptitious rhythm
and make a kind of sense
or perhaps nonsense
depending on whether it’s Thursday —
if I didn’t choose to play
in this particular puddle, splashing myself
all over the pavement, embarrassing
myself in front of your eyes —
I believe the words would build up
in my brain, and it would explode
like a bomb filled with clouds, mountains,
oak forests in which owls fly silently through the night,
the sight of wild geese overhead, the sound
of snow falling from overladen fir branches onto snow,
lakes that reflect the sky between shards
of floating ice, wolves howling at the moon,
mushrooms growing on an old log,
Autumn dancing with red and yellow leaves in her hair,
bare branches against the sky forming a rune
I do not understand, time itself,
and an undefinable longing.
Forgive me for committing, repeatedly,
the act of poetry. I’ve trying not to disintegrate
or make a mess.

(The image is Jeune Fille Ecrivant by Berthe Morisot.)

Mother Night
by Theodora Goss

Last night I went to the house of my mother, Night.
Her house has many doors, some large, some smaller
than a mouse hole. You are welcome at all of them.
Her house has many windows. They shine like stars
in the darkness, and on top of the highest tower
is the moon, like a weathervane.

I knocked and was invited into her parlor.
She asked me what was wrong, although of course,
as usual, she knew without my having to tell her.
“You’re tired,” she said. “So very tired, my dear.”
I simply nodded in answer.
It was true, I had been tired and sick with longing
for things I could not have: a cloak of darkness,
a library of answers, an elixir
that takes away all pain, a talking raven
to be my boon companion.

“You know the rules,” she said, pointing at the wall
where these words were written in calligraphy:
You can have anything you already have,
You can be anything you already are.
“How can I have what I don’t have?” I asked her.
“How can I be what I am not yet?” She simply
smiled and shook her head.

“Might as well say you cannot dream until
you are asleep, or cannot dance until
the music has started playing, when you know,
it is the dream that draws your eyelids down,
the dance that summons the tune. Are you a child,
to think clocks only run forward?”

I felt like an idiot, as when I was her student
and bungled every lesson with common sense
when it was uncommon sense her teaching called for.
I sat on the parlor sofa, crying in frustration
while she stroked my hair and poured me a cup of tea,
served with her usual mixture
of metaphysics and sympathy.
Why had I come, after all? I was not certain.

“Now think, my dear,” she said, “or rather, don’t.
I seem to remember thinking never got you
anywhere but Confusion.” She was right, of course:
in school that was my regular destination.
I leaned back against a cushion and sipped my tea,
pondering the nature of reality, which resembles
a ball of string tangled by a kitten.

“I’ll weave myself a cloak of darkness,” I said,
finally. “For the thread,
I’ll unravel my own shadow. The library,
I already have; I just need to catalog
the volumes I own correctly.” “And the elixir?”
she asked. Her eyes were shining, as they do
when a student of hers is being unusually clever.
“Doesn’t exist,” I said, “because pain itself
is the elixir of life. Without it, we may
as well be dead.” I didn’t like that answer.
But after all, we never get everything
we want, not even at Christmas.
“As for the raven, I believe one will come
to me when I’m wise enough for it to talk to.
You know they’re most particular.”

“You’re wiser than you were already,” she answered,
patting my head, which was a bit patronizing,
but I didn’t mind it, from her.
“You’re wrong about the elixir. I’ll tell you the secret
of dealing with pain, which is poetry.
It never gets into every nook and cranny;
nevertheless, I think you should write it more often.
As for the raven, I may have one around here
that I can lend until you find your own.”

She sent me home with some gingerbread and a bird,
rusty black, eyeing me with suspicion.
Now, it sits in the library, perched on a stack
of books I’m trying to get in the right order
so I can find an answer — to anything, really.
She was right about the poetry.
And I’m weaving my cloak of darkness. Mother Night
isn’t the easiest teacher, but her advice
is generally to be relied on.

(The image is Night Looking Upon Sleep Her Beloved Child by Simeon Solomon.)

The Phantom Lover
by Theodora Goss

The one I have loved is a shadow
or the ghost of a dream,
a phantom made of starlight
cast on a stream,
whose voice is the murmur of beeches,
whose touch the wing
of a moth that rises with darkness,
or a spider’s sting.

He walks with the sound of branches
that creak in the dark.
I wake and find on my shoulder
a burning mark,
as though hot wax has fallen
on my white skin.
I am conscious of confusion
and pleasing sin.

No boot has come over the casement
though the window’s wide,
and only the call of an owl
is sounding outside,
but my love has been, like a shadow
or the ghost of a dream,
a phantom made of starlight
cast on a stream.

(The image is an illustration by Emma Florence Harrison.)