Theodora Goss: Poems

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.)

The Fox Wife
by Theodora Goss

I saw you dancing in a glade alone,
feet bare and dressed in nothing but a rag,
your red hair like a fire around your head.
I had to stand and look and keep on looking.

I saw you standing there among the trees,
smelled you before I saw you. First, I thought
you were a hunter. But no, you smelled of earth,
not death. I danced because I saw you looking.

Day after day, I went back to that glade.
And sometimes you were there, and sometimes not.

That was deliberate. I did not want you
to always get what you were coming for.
One day you stepped into the glade and spoke:
“I have been watching you. Can you forgive me?”

I wanted to say more: you burn so brightly,
I wonder that the forest is still standing.
You are more graceful than a flock of doves.
You should be dressed in silk instead of rags.
I am only a farmer, but I love you.

And yet somehow you said all of those things.
At least, I heard them and I followed you
out of the forest and into the farmyard.
The dogs barked, but you would not let them near me.

I did not know why all the dogs were barking.
What was it made you come? Now tell me truly.
Was it the possibility of finding
a home, a husband, not some soggy burrow?

That, I suppose. And then you looked so handsome.
And then there were the dresses, silk as promised.
I could have done worse than a prosperous farmer.

Or better: you would make a splendid lady,
upon your horse and riding by his lordship.

You flatter me. But then, you know I like it.
When I was heavy with our oldest son,
you told me I still looked just like the girl
you first saw dancing in the forest glade.

And so you did. Now dear, be reasonable . . .
Were we not always happiest together,
on rainy afternoons when you sat sewing
and I would read to you from some old book?
Or when we would go walking in the spring
to see the glade you dance in filled with bluebells?
Or when we watched our sons and daughter sleeping,
three heads with hair like fire upon the pillows.
Where are they now? Where are our children, dear?

Down in the burrow, safe from you and yours.

I would not hurt a hair upon their heads.

You hung my sister’s pelt upon the door.
You said there had been foxes in the henhouse.
You set those traps and did not think to tell me.

But how was I to know? Be reasonable . . .

Each night, while you lay sleeping, I snuck out.
A thing that was once wild is never tame.
I went to smell the earth, to meet my kind.
I went to see the bright disk of the moon.
You set those traps and caught my sister in one.
And what should I see on the henhouse door
next morning when I went to gather eggs?
Our children are asleep inside this burrow.
Your dogs would tear them up within an instant.

But dear, they’re human too, you can’t deny that.

Your dogs would. They shall learn the forest paths,
learn how to hunt, how to avoid the hunter.
They shall be cold in winter, wet in storms,
they shall eat mice and rabbits, roam the meadow,
drink from the streams and try to catch the birds.
When they are grown, they’ll put on human skins
and go into the town, but I shall warn them
never to fall in love. Not with a human.

Why can’t you see that I meant you no harm?
I did not know . . . My dear, won’t you forgive me?

I am not tame. I can’t be reasoned with,
and there is no forgiveness in the forest.
Either kill me with that gun you carry,
or go.

          He went. The birches heard him weeping.

(The image is Dancing Fox by Ohara Koson.)

The Sound of Rain
by Theodora Goss

Is there anything as beautiful
as the sound of rain
when you are tucked safe and warm and fed
into a comfortable bed
with roses on the counterpane,
while through the window
comes the cold gray light of autumn
like a promise of purpose after rest —
a world of red leaves and crisp winds,
of puddles and scuttling clouds,
once you have left
this down and flannel nest?

But in the meantime,
raindrops are pattering on the porch
like metronomes
all set to a different tempo,
and you can slip away
for a little while longer, head
lying on your pillow,
into the freshly-laundered country
of dreams.

(The image is Woman Reading in Bed by Gabriel Ferrier.)