WEBVTT

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Here's a poem.

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I read a lot of poems
sometimes about people.

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It seems that when I get
around people, things go wrong.

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They may only go wrong in me.

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But sometimes they
get out of hand.

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And they even go wrong
for the other people.

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I don't think I'm
the immediate cause.

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I just happened to be
there when it's happening.

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And this was a poem that
originally had dedication.

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It was for a girl that
I knew, whose marriage

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seemed to have broken up.

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And so I dedicated
the poem to her.

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Wrong move.

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Never dedicate a poem to someone
under those circumstances

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I was trying to get out
from the outside anyway.

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I was trying to feel whatever
it was that she was feeling.

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And what eventually
happened was I just did it

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and let her do all the talking.

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There was no way
to talk about it.

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It seemed to me the only thing
that I could have happened

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if I was going to
get to it at all

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was let her say whatever
she had on her mind.

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So the poem is called
The Deserted Wife.

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It has no dedication.

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And a woman speaks in it.

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Imagine my voice
a little higher.

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Thumbing his magazine he is
the stranger, I was warned of.

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I glance up at the clock.

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The door to the
bedroom stands ajar.

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I try to go on reading
as the dark settles

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in the branches
of the apple tree.

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I know what he expects.

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Someone to lie
beneath him groaning.

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How can I leave this house
that means so little to me?

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How could I fail to
gather up its dust, who

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should take care be neat,
and clean, and mind the way

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she walks as the
sisters taught us.

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I must have been a
child a long time.

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How could I believe
the women I saw

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clutching bags of
groceries in the street

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could be quickened by love?

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How neat and clean.

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My mind was like a sewing
drawer in which the scissors

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and needles have their place
and lie there ready to be used.

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I read.

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I try to read.

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I feel the faces of cruel
children staring at me.

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I need my father I think.

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I need to feel him shake
and lift me in his arms.

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I heard you scream, he says.

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It's all right now.

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A dream, a bad dream.

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It's over.

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But I do not wake.