Tropes for the Unsayable
or
Shop of Lost Hopes
or
Scent of Lilies—or Magnolias
the sparkle of thought
before it makes itself available
path of river on the map
of how it is between us
shreddy-edged uneven rectangle
white lace
no bigger than a handkerchief
love’s bloody straits
gone dry and stiff
the permanent denial
of the boy Isaac
certainty’s dazzling embrace:
closed systems’ glitter
—after Clarice Lispector
Great-Grandmother Comes to Me in a Dream
carrying sprigs of white and yellow wildflowers trailing
leaves she is perhaps eighteen sunlight streams
onto hair fine red-brown a few curls falling from blue ribbons
trimmed with white strides wide fields years
before her limbs open bring out seven children
some of whom won’t grow Lithe light
small bony feet restrained by little boots made
extravagance! for this visit Invitation
an undreamed of ornament So she comes
more than one-hundred-fifty versts by train farthest
she will ever be from Moscow to this house outside Tula
Sofia Andreyevna’s house where — voices crossing one another
laughing — they picked the flowers she is holding
Sofia Andreyevna her mother’s friend seen last
before my ancestor’s womanhood came on wife now
to an older man he writes books! she cannot read Russian
At a table set out under trees cucumbers in sour cream
with crusty bread and cheese borscht a chilled delicious
pleasure on the summer day and ah her friend’s fine welcome
great house and pretty children The man walking
with his secretary book in hand stops breath
she’d thought a writer would be polished
like a city-man Though rough
in countenance he comes to greet her gently and with warmth
Servants bring the samovar sweet tea as light fades
in the corner of the drawing room Sofia Andreyevna
favors Flowers tumble from a blue enamel vase
its edge a braid of gold and table dressed
with patterned cloth from far away — the East on the walls
faces distract Her people do not permit
images Sofia Andreyevna has begun work
in a new science making pictures she calls photographs shows
children and Lev Nicolaevich on the steps of the house
and you can see the orchards — points —
weren’t yet fully grown In all directions dark
beyond tall windows endless wood cut by paths
her husband likes to walk with his dogs she says
glad of solitude and trees birdcall scents
of earth and growing things Light a pale smear
on the sky they show her a bed under the vaults
She lies alone in greeny light In years to come
she’ll dream the older couple’s marriage its ease
and golden plates and serving people beautiful children
vast reaches of forest ponds with reedy edges
fine for bathing green wood a comforting enclosure
Winter nights she will remember Sofia Andreyevna
and her man in summer evening light hips touching
on the red silk sofa his fine eyes her eloquence
in French and Russian words in German
an accomplishment She will lie in bed
and hope for plenty if not riches like her friend’s
a good man to share her bed though she can’t know
how men and women are together how daily lives burn
and brim with grief and laughter Simple girl she has no idea
what love is One day she will make milk for babies
she has given birth to and for orphaned others she
imagines none of this and cannot imagine me
in a faraway country at ease in my difficult language
centuries having turned and turned again
nor does she understand how germ cells wrapped in helical embraces
bearing gait and eye-shape hers and mine will spill
down and down and down through unimagined time
Forgiveness, an Abstract
suffering wrong
suffering
wrong
atonement
moral anger
resentment
vengefulness
hurt
rage
trust
distrust mistrust
forgiveness
unilateral
unconditional
conditional
partial
dismay
diminishment
fury
despair
dejection
discouragement
disheartenment
disillusion
dissolution
loss of heart
loss of hope
loss
wounds
over time
feelings over time like water
feelings over time
like water
accident
attack
misuse
abuse
injury
wounds
apology
forgiveness
forgiveness
reciprocity
reconciliation
reparation
repentance
responsibility
restitution
reconsideration
reconstitution
restoration
retribution
burden
sympathy
imaginative indwelling
apology
truth
trust
ressentiment
offerings
amends
moral transformation
moral weight
burden
burden
GUILT
violation
INTENTION
degradation
depredation
wrongdoing
acceptance
apology
alteration
redemption
Much of the language is from “A Sorry Business,”
Charles L. Griswold’s Review of Resentment’s Virtue, Thomas Brudholm, I Was Wrong, Nick Smith, and
Making Amends, Linda Radzik TLS (January 7, 2011, 28)
[ressentiment: undoing of the past: the translation is Griswold’s]
Souk, Akko
As roads in all the world are torqued and bent
by the terrain and habits of the living
the souk descends from markets under scanty trees,
shelter from the desert, cool and windless,
and enclosed. Stone-lined avenues meander west,
drawn toward the inland sea, or east to Mecca.
Heaps of apricots and dates on trays
of hammered copper, woven cotton draped
from lines and folded, complex patterns
and geometries like antiphon to the abayah.
Drifts of scent lift from piles of oranges and figs,
pomegranates, dates, bananas. Flourishes
of local stone stud silver ornament
and hand-worked gold. Sharp as circumflex
a turn before the mosque's façade: stones wet
with the day's scrubbing, and narrow streets
beyond choked here and there by bales of hay,
sacks of pistachios, arrays of fresh-caught fish.
Time’s harmonics tremble in the souk’s dry air
that moves like a river, gathering the living, traces
of the sacred and profane, and in the wake, shapes,
oxbows and arabesques, wide and slow and flexed. 
Deena Linett’s third poetry collection, The Gate at Visby, is in press. Her prose and poems appear in Tiferet, The Literary Review,and other little magazines.
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