What's Broken

Christian Schloe

What’s Broken

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The slate black sky. The middle step

of the back porch. And long ago

my mother’s necklace, the beads

rolling north and south. Broken

the rose stem, water into drops, glass

knobs on the bedroom door. Last summer’s

pot of parsley and mint, white roots

shooting like streamers through the cracks.

Years ago the cat’s tail, the bird bath,

the car hood’s rusted latch. Broken

little finger on my right hand at birth—

I was pulled out too fast. What hasn’t 

been rent, divided, split? Broken

the days into nights, the night sky

into stars, the stars into patterns

I make up as I trace them

with a broken-off blade

of grass. Possible, unthinkable,

the cricket’s tiny back as I lie

on the lawn in the dark, my heart

a blue cup fallen from someone’s hands.

Dorianne Laux 

This cataloguing of broken things is mysteriously moving. Is it the way little broken things are described, and seem to intimate much more (different kinds of brokenness - by over-use, accident, or growth, to name a few)? And broken things that are beautiful - the sky and patterns of the stars. I love that image of the woman lying on her back tracing the stars.  And then that remarkable moment at the end, where she describes her heart as " a blue cup fallen from someone's hands".  I think about that over and over, what that means. Fragility. Disregard. A very significant thing described as something small. The fact that she is lying down and that the cup has fallen - all these echo each other and amaze me.


 

 

105

Christian Schloe

105

cruelly, love

walk the autumn long;

the last flower in whose hair,

thy lips are cold with songs

for which is

first to wither, to pass?

shallowness of sunlight

falls and, cruelly,

across the grass

Comes the

moon

love, walk the

autumn

love, for the last

flower in the hair withers;

thy hair is acold with

dreams,

love thou art frail

- walk the longness of autumn

smile dustily to the people,

for winter

who crookedly care.

E.E. Cummings

"Thy lips are cold with songs." "Love thou art frail." I couldn't tell you what this poem means, but the phrases cling to my mind. "The last flower in the hair withers." I read it and think maybe Cummings has arranged the whole thing backwards, and what would the words look like in their proper order? But I want it the way it is. The changing of the seasons is personal in Cummings poetry, more than just outward and physical, it is an expression of inner loss and transition. And that phrase "thy hair is acold with dreams" is wonderful, it is one of those things poets do - show us beautiful mysteries. He leaves us with wonder.