In the Greek myth, Alcestis chooses
to go down into hell in place of her husband, who was supposed
to go, but who was frightened by the idea,
and who had already tried to talk his old parents into going
in his place.
They refused.
But Alcestis said that she would do it.
Alcestis, for Stanley Kunitz.
She pulled her gown from her shoulders,
kicked off her shoes, then passed a mirror.
Her wan face did not appear.
She left without kissing her husband.
In the boat to hell, she discovered that crowded souls
flowed together.
She wept as the casual hands swarming through her heart,
waving away flies, or lighting tiny
matches to view the caverns of dark water.
When she smoothed her braid, she could not
distinguish it from air.
After the boat docked, she observed her father
on the porch of a hotel, dozing beside the guitar
he played at her wedding.
She tried to wake him, her fingers
glided through his jacket.
She could not twang the guitar.
Yet she thought a girl once danced under the stars
to its real music.
Would she sleep this sound?
Her father bowed his head, as if listening.
She sensed the eyes at every window,
waiting for her to come inside, where
a maid turned down the sheets on the customary mattress of dirt.
At the door, she recalled the candles flaring
on her last birthday cake.
What was it she wished for then?
She glanced back across the river,
wishing someone called her name.
The stone floor chilled her foot.
The dog's dreaming by the stairs lifted their muscles
for affection.
But by then, she had no gestures left within her cold
and formal hands.
Thank you.