Read an Excerpt
The 1002nd Night
By Debora Greger PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1990 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-06863-3
CHAPTER 1
The 1002nd Night
Like any husband lying
beside a long-held wife, mine stretches,
ear to pillow's beached shell,
the heart's dim chambers awash with waves.
In the women's quarters a door shudders
on the days I lay landlocked
like a sailor turned weaver,
a knot for each night
the heavens tattered overhead
while, robed as lioness, given leash
to toy with prey, I told tales
as much to a lizard on the window grille
as to a husband holding my life in his palm.
Heart a lazuli pebble,
a lapis pulse under lunar skin,
the lizard fed me scant regard,
caught by the oil lamp's flickering tongue.
Knotted in our makeshift firmament,
Draco and Virgo fixedly drifting
neither into conjunction nor apart—
I went on, betraying nothing,
faithful at least to the story's letter,
and couldn't say that fear nursed grudge
those small hours. A near-human cry
slit the desert shadow, peahen baiting cock,
then deeper voices fishtailed from hearing,
the cloths men had spread to collect the dew
waiting to be wrung of their jewels.
I watched a dune shift grain by grain
the hourglass's heavy sleep
as dawn rain slipped unremarked
into a tale of northern kingdoms,
stealing through an everyday forest,
piercing the canopy of needles
to whip the cottonwoods' quivering leaves
into fistfuls of foreign coins
flung at a dancer walking from work
through the understory. First light hardens
where it strikes the cleaned bones
of the only two stories,
a man goes on a journey, a stranger
rides into town—bones of the one told twice,
once from his view, once mine.
From ribbed clouds a moon tugs the far seas
farther away, ivory gates flooding wide
at a breath. A salt caravan sifts
a fresh-swept page of sand: A husband lies
beside a long-held wife,
her dim heart's chambers awash with waves.
The Opera Companion
COSÌ FAN TUTTE
Qual prova avete vol, che ognor costanti
Vi sien le vostre amanti?
In dresses stiffly ribboned as Victorian houses,
two women at the edge of a quarrel
sublimely trill it into a small concerto.
At the blonde's muscled throat,
a miniature pulses—her lover cavalier
against flames: passion's pitched battle,
its chill hearth. As though neither
can hear the other, they hurl their secrets
in sly modulations toward us, fourth wall
of their house—whether to change lovers
like dresses to match another dazzling
Neapolitan day. Painted, the bay's silk
ripples around islands anchored firmly
as love in a deep bed; the volcano smolders,
rouging the horizon. Powdered bosoms swell
over full lungs, the ache of harmony's thirds
baring an isolation never hinted,
pulsing under the score by a man who
in 1787 wrote to his father that,
of companions, death is the most faithful.
CALLAS
Ascolta!
Up through ranks of lowly marigolds
calla lilies push, budding divas
in understudy unswaddling ivory throats,
preening for dressing-room mirrors
in the starched ruffs of Maria Stuarda.
Lopped, they crowd a vase next to paints
for a face sunned by holidays spent
at a score's flyspecks until had by heart
amid arching scales and arpeggios.
Over the intercom a voice scrambles onstage,
ascending stairs of another story:
husband taken care of this nuptial night
by her own hand, the single petals
of Lucia's spotless sleeves bell open.
Her light fingers twine spotlit air
to a fakir's rope snaking upward
into the flies, high mad notes wobbling
up the sturdy stalk of a hothouse bloom
as she wilts. Fioriture
trained to take the knife in character,
the lilies didn't flinch from the florist
whose blade failed to retract.
They bowed, professional as the white dress
of the girl who faced soldiers, trading fire:
arias for sweets to fatten three voices
too big for her—a low range,
its drops veiled by the mirage
of reedy middle tones that flooded the hall
without quenching a top note's florescence.
On her dressing table, in with other spills,
pollen spends its overbright powder.
DON GIOVANNI IN FLORIDA
Le finestre son queste; ora cantiamo.
Wind's base aspirations flutter palmetto fans
in the face of a mute chorus, windows gaping
at pollen gilding suspended quarrels
and snatches of another music,
Italian for how many women a man's had.
A rake rattles the neighborhood gossip
of magnolia leaves, the entanglements
of Spanish moss draped in shawls
over bared arms of sweet-gum branches.
Che bella notte, the famous rakehell sings,
for hunting girls, strolling a graveyard.
Past the jaws of two plastered lions
,
under a singer teetering from a second story,
women in flowered frocks dot a fraternity lawn,
mimicking the white crocus that depends
on chillier states to open,
plastic cups of flattened beer
leaning to toast conquest of anything:
a soprano's No, non ti credo brushed aside;
the galantuomo, good profligate,
making little deaths in the arms of desire
do for more gripping darkness,
his voice silkily lifting skirted curtains,
worming its way in.
BARNUM'S SWEDISH NIGHTINGALE
She claims I exhibited her as good
as next to Chang and Eng or General Tom Thumb,
but what grounds? Europe she'd taken by song,
but who'd taken note here? "A dancer?"
guessed the conductor of trains I asked.
So I made her yours, all but the voice,
and that, I loved her to say, borrowed from birds,
in her avian accent. What to exhibit?
Had she been half a set of Siamese twins
who harmonized, or bird-sized,
had feathers for that flaxen hair—
plumage like the warbler's I can report
sang with her till it fell dead at our feet—
herding her twittering flock
four thousand miles for ninety-three concerts
wouldn't have been enough campaign
for this old campaigner, nor I still
my own best advertisement. But, her mouth shut,
what marked her from you, my often vocal public?
I applaud the one of you who sold me her portrait
in oils, gilt-framed, fifty dollars,
knowing what I didn't till later:
the look of a lithograph varnished on tin
worth thirty-seven cents. This way
to my Great American Museum and Menagerie:
human statues, trained seals almost human.
This way to the Egress.
The Married State
To the hawk drifting in vague rings
above Nevada, scouting for kill,
plight thermal air currents plaiting their columns
into ghost ruins of the temple
still supporting a fragment of frieze
where feet carved in relief trample the remains
laid out in stone of a wedding feast
that fire, more forgiving, would spit at
as at the virgins vowed once to its endless tending
To tumbleweed, bind telephone pole,
guy-wired upright the lone prospect
on the wind-defiled plain. Their embrace
half thorn, half handful of splinters—
to the garden of Elsewhere their woods stand for,
to long-distance lines wordlessly murmurous
of that static hush descending
more before sleep's little deaths
than speech's, pair the highway motel,
where split seconds lodge their silence
between a past caught underwheel
as trucks haul through the night,
and the animal sadness coming after,
downshifting into futures tearing away.
To proposals unmet, couple the direct approach
down from switchbacks of bare hills
to hot air licking pavement wet,
roadbed's tease melting ahead
into glimmers of clear invitation,
mirage that dries itself in a flourish
as a single car nears.
To the arrow of light bulbs chasing each other,
on and off, up to the pilasters of Zeno's Casino
without shooting inside, pledge full houses
come again. To air-conditioned plush,
to plump rolls of complimentary coins
keen to shake loose each other
and be swallowed by swift machinery
of state, tender each face
of the soon-to-be-sundered couples,
the summarily tied, their promised,
their compromised hands to the handles
of machines responding heartlessly
with probability's ill-matched threesomes of fruit.
On the Margins
IN THE ENCYCLOPEDIA, VOLUME I
After the Low Countries, Reader,
turn back, turning out the small pocket
in the seam between larger powers,
a smuggler's pouch the shape of Andorra
counting on being passed over as always,
small potato at one with those rolled loose
from their ox-driven wagon and wedged
between boulders' ice-age guard
shouldering the one municipal road.
Overlook, as the brief entry does
from lofty vantage, a main valley
that highroad and one river thread—
how they contrive to needle shepherds
and brigands alike, long-frozen passages
halting even the most stir-crazed raider.
Its rulers rival each other for inaction,
stalemated bishop holding in check a prince
over country jointly held not worth dispute.
Sleep inbred in its snows, landlocked island
unreachable by air, railless,
its passes blocked for ages—till
the odd anthropologist makes his way
to the one hotel, where he stumbles
upon luggage abandoned by another of his kind
belaboring the lift to effect transhumance
up a floor, machine in medieval dialect
unburdening itself the while with groans
of a steep-pitched room letting slide
a year's thatch of snow. Six-fingered streams
swarm the one street while, higher,
snow's altar cloths stripped away,
peaked dustcovers prostrate
before a hunting lodge's mounted heads,
smugglers the mountains claimed in duty
lie revealed, well preserved as local saints
tucked between anachronism and anomaly,
sporting their cloth-of-gold.
IN THE HEAVEN OF SIDEKICKS
nbsp; Esteemed members of the Academy,
nbsp; leading men and ladies whose names balloon
nbsp; from the tongues of talk-show hosts
nbsp; into the starry firmament of fame
nbsp; above the titles of movies beneath which we flicker
nbsp; and are extinguished in smaller type,
nbsp; extend your regard as your hand,
nbsp; acting a storm, would stretch forth
nbsp; to calm seas of dry ice,
nbsp; toward us old reliables
nbsp; where we lounge and swagger
nbsp; safely out of camera range,
nbsp; having lunged and staggered,
nbsp; picked off in our prime.
nbsp; Draw closer if I fail to reach you,
nbsp; drawing closer your furs to upstage
nbsp; the air conditioner acting up.
nbsp; Unamplified, let me wax eloquent
nbsp; as apples ruddy in rude boxes
nbsp; on those who neither soften
nbsp; nor go bad, the cowhands who rode herd
nbsp; fattening for your prodigal return,
nbsp; well versed at stepping out of the way
nbsp; through lines of fire, catching stray bullets,
nbsp; common colds, rare diseases,
nbsp; and misfired bridal bouquets one-handed.
nbsp; Relaxed as ventriloquists' retired dummies,
nbsp; we grant audience in front of televisions
nbsp; snapped to attention—"The Late Show" where,
nbsp; in snippets between commercials
nbsp; likely to feature you as well,
nbsp; household words trading on your bankable names,
nbsp; we ride again into no sunsets.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The 1002nd Night by Debora Greger. Copyright © 1990 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
