That silly corner question; and sit still
And eyeless listen, guard the pass
March past, mass tear rush and mistress passing by:
The clacking of heels and tongues on stones, talking
Of stones with clacking tongues, lolling of heels
Stoning the stone tongues, clack of tongue-in-cheeked

Claqued cliques.
The low heels are men, the high-and-mighty
Ones the women; but from where I stand
Or rather where I sit or slouch or lean
The miss’s, mistress’s, and Mrs.’s
All speak or sound or mean or seem the same.

GIRL:

BLINDMAN:

Blood and bone, hung on my grafted tree;
I cannot stay here.

Since he’s been slaving late at that awful office.

                                                what to do
Turn myself into a vacuum cleaner and suck
The mud from feet and doorsteps into my belly
Lick the hardwood floor and call it love?
I’d rather let the peeled paint
Blister itself away

And the smashed bleared glass of my mirror
Find its own meaning, fall where it may.

        I really have to go.

Mother I meant or younger under me:
        What will the women at the bridge club say?
What will the women at the bridge club see
Except their own red and black hands
       And their neighbours’?
My dialectic tickled.

I’m glad I didn’t listen.

GIRL:

                                And neighbours

        I only hear them here
Snatches of minds
        Sounds dropped through slots of ears
        Behind my lids of blinds.

Gruntled before the plugged electric fire;
A little riddle, babbit-bajazeth
Babbling in his bath,
And squeaking when you pinch him, like
A rubber duck.
        He shakes the bars, and splashes water

        Over his outside-inside daughter;
What can I do but serve him up
Canned heart (with gravy) in a loving-cup?
I have to get home.

After an up-all-nightmare
Down all night
Frolic on the broad-
Loom, cutting up a rug
Into small bite-size chunks; someone
        Make me a definite decision

        Equal to mother’s no
        Or father’s love-pat-smack on the naughty back;
A definite decision–

        One more dim
        The mask of an old complacent wrinkled
        Harridan in mink;
        The other nearer
        Melting through my teeth of ice
        With fire of her hard mouth.

Are these my mother’s, sister’s, or my own
Pattern in my inevitable bone?

All pastiched, predicted in
My infant fingerprints;

GIRL:

Than to abandon blazing black-and-white
Of childhead for forced form of maidenhood
Crouched grey outside my paled hart-guarded wood.

                                                  Or be
And all I ever had, and have been, hang
Shrunk forever on their dry and shrivelled stems

MATRON:

There’s no return.

From her cornucopious supermarket mind
Like toothpaste from a tube?
        I hear one urge

MATRON:

And listening blights the bud.

And there’s really nothing worse than cold potato.
        Come, husband, open your mouth and take the spoon.
Few of the other women
Have such a well-trained tricky little pet.

Anyway, it’s been a lovely ride.
I’ll go on going till another lift
Carries me to the brink
        Then I’ll either start or stop
                                               To look or think

Fall it must at last
        But I will not stay here; I’ll walk in the rain
        And wrapping wind
        Back where I came.

Someday
        One will perhaps explain.

A city, after the snow and before the leaves.

BLINDMAN:

for a minute, two minutes
minute silence shattered only be the push of leaves, too deep
under or too far down for me to hear
the heels have immigrated to the suburbs, each his bunny caught
with cunning coney-catching play;
his master stroke, piece, bringing peace at least

—or so he thought.
        another minute, day,
                                       year
the tongues are silent but the stones repeat:

MATRON:

Impossible buds, rotting before the blossom,
Tell me how I have weathered the winter.
Make me a definite decision
                                good or bad,
Make me a definite

MATRON:

WOMAN:

WOMAN: