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To My Daughter Everything I see will outlive me. - Anna Akhmatova It's too late now to put a curse on you - wish you plain, say, as Yeats did his daughter. And when we met her in Silgo, selling her paintings, it'd worked - she was the plainest, oldest woman in Ireland. But she was safe. For the longest time, his reasoning escaped me. Anyway, it's too late for you, as I said. You've grownup now, and lovely. You're a beautiful drunk, daughter. But you're a drunk. I can't say you're breaking my heart. I don't have a heart when it comes to this booze thing. Sad, yes, Christ alone knows. Your old man, the one they call Shiloh, is back in town, and the drink has started to flow again. You've been drunk for three days, you tell me, when you know goddamn well drinking is like poison to our family. Didn't your mother and I set you example enough? Two people who loved each other knocking each other around, knocking back the love we felt, glass by empty glass, curses and blows and betrayals? You must be crazy! Wasn't all that enough for you? You want to die? Maybe that's it. Maybe I think I know you, and I don't. I'm not kidding, Kiddo. Who are you kidding? Daughter, you can't drink. The last few times I saw you, you were out of it. A cast on your collarbone, or else a splint on your finger, dark glasses to hide your beautiful bruised eyes. A lip that a man should kiss instead of split. Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus Christ! You've got to take hold now. Do you hear me? Wake up! You've got to knock it off and get straight. Clean up your act. I'm asking you. Okay, telling you. Sure, our family was made to squander, not collect. But turn this around now. You simply must - that's all! Daughter, you can't drink. It will kill you. Like it did your mother, and me. Like it did. The Cobweb A few minutes ago, I stepped on to the deck of the house. From there I could see and hear the water, and everything that's happened to me all these years. It was hot and still. The tide was out. No birds sand. As I leaned against the railing a cobweb touched my forehead. It caught in my hair. No one can blame me that I turned and went inside. There was no wind. The sea was dead calm. I hung the cobweb from the lampshade. Where I watch it shudder now and then when my breath touches it. A fine thread. Intricate. Before long, before anyone realizes, I'll be gone from here. Rhodes I don't know the names of flowers or one tree from another, nevertheless I sit in the square under a cloud of Papisostros smoke and sip Hellas beer. Somewhere nearby there is a Colossus waiting for another artist, another earthquake. But I'm not ambitious. I'd like to stay, it's true, though I'd want to hang out with the civic deer that surround the Hospitaler castle on the hill. They are beautiful deer and their lean haunches flicker under an assault of white butterflies. High on the battlement a tall, stiff figure of a man keeps watch on Turkey. A warm rain begins to fall. A peacock shakes drops of water from its tail and heads for cover. In the Moslem graveyard a cat sleeps in a niche between two stones. Just time for a look into the casino, except I'm not dressed. Back on board, ready for bed, I lie down and remember I've been to Rhodes. But there's something else - I hear again the voice of the croupier calling thirty-two, thirty-two as my body flies over water, as my soul, poised like a cat, hovers - then leaps into sleep. At Least I want to get up early one morning, before sunrise. Before the birds, even. I want to throw cold water on my face and be at my work table when the sky lightens and smoke begins to rise from the chimneys of the other houses. I want to see the waves break on this rocky beach, not just hear them break as I did all night in my sleep. I want to see again the ships that pass through the strait from every seafaring country in the world - old, dirty freighters just barely moving along, and the swift new cargo vessels painted every color under the sun that cut the water as they pass. I want to keep an eye out for them. And for the little boat the plies the water between the ships and the pilot station near the lighthouse. I want to see them taking a man off the ship and put another up on board. I want to spend the day watching this happen and reach my own conclusions. I hate to seem greedy - I have so much to be thankful for already. But I want to get up early one morning, at least. And go to my place with some coffee and wait. Just wait, to see what's going to happen. |  |
