A Man Meets a Woman in the Street
\n<\/i>
\nby Randall Jarrell<\/p>\n

Under the separated leaves of shade
\nOf the gingko, that old tree
\nThat has existed essentially unchanged
\nLonger than any other living tree,
\nI walk behind a woman. Her hair’s coarse gold
\nIs spun from the sunlight that it rides upon.
\nWomen were paid to knit from sweet champagne
\nHer second skin: it winds and unwinds, winds
\nUp her long legs, delectable haunches,
\nAs she sways, in sunlight, up the gazing aisle.
\nThe shade of the tree that is called maidenhair,
\nThat is not positively known
\nTo exist in a wild state, spots her fair or almost fair
\nHair twisted in a French twist; tall or almost tall,
\nShe walks through the air the rain has washed, a clear thing
\nMoving easily on its high heels, seeming to men
\nMiraculous . . . Since I can call her, as Swann couldn’t,
\nA woman who is my type, I follow with the warmth
\nOf familiarity, of novelty, this new
\nExample of the type,
\nReminded of how Lorenz’s just-hatched goslings
\nShook off the last remnants of the egg
\nAnd, looking at Lorenz, realized that Lorenz
\nWas their mother. Quacking, his little family
\nFollowed him everywhere; and when they met a goose,
\nTheir mother, they ran to him afraid.<\/p>\n

Imprinted upon me
\nIs the shape I run to, the sweet strange
\nBreath-taking contours that breathe to me: “I am yours,
\nBe mine!”
\nFollowing this new
\nBody, somehow familiar, this young shape, somehow old,
\nFor a moment I’m younger, the century is younger.
\nThe living Strauss, his moustache just getting gray,
\nIs shouting to the players: “Louder!
\nLouder! I can still hear Madame Schumann-Heink\u2014”
\nOr else, white, bald, the old man’s joyfully
\nTelling conductors they must play Elektra<\/i>
\nLike A Midsummer Night’s Dream<\/i>\u2014like fairy music;
\nProust, dying, is swallowing his iced beer
\nAnd changing in proof the death of Bergotte
\nAccording to his own experience; Garbo,
\nA commissar in Paris, is listening attentively
\nTo the voice telling how McGillicuddy met McGillivray,
\nAnd McGillivray said to McGillicuddy\u2014no, McGillicuddy
\nSaid to McGillivray\u2014that is, McGillivray . . . Garbo
\nSays seriously: “I vish dey’d never met.”<\/p>\n

As I walk behind this woman I remember
\nThat before I flew here\u2014waked in the forest
\nAt dawn, by the piece called Birds Beginning Day<\/i>
\nThat, each day, birds play to begin the day\u2014
\nI wished as men wish: “May this day be different!”
\nThe birds were wishing, as birds wish\u2014over and over,
\nWith a last firmness, intensity, reality\u2014
\n“May this day be the same!”
\nAh, turn to me
\nAnd look into my eyes, say: “I am yours,
\nBe mine!”
\nMy wish will have come true. And yet
\nWhen your eyes meet my eyes, they’ll bring into
\nThe weightlessness of my pure wish the weight
\nOf a human being: someone to help or hurt,
\nSomeone to be good to me, to be good to,
\nSomeone to cry when I am angry
\nThat she doesn’t like Elektra<\/i>, someone to start out on Proust with.
\nA wish, come true, is life. I have my life.
\nWhen you turn just slide your eyes across my eyes
\nAnd show in a look flickering across your face
\nAs lightly as a leaf’s shade, a bird’s wing,
\nThat there is no one in the world quite like me,
\nThat if only . . . If only . . .
\nThat will be enough.<\/p>\n

But I’ve pretended long enough: I walk faster
\nAnd come close, touch with the tip of my finger
\nThe nape of her neck, just where the gold
\nHair stops, and the champagne-colored dress begins.
\nMy finger touches her as the gingko’s shadow
\nTouches her.<\/p>\n

Because, after all, it is<\/i> my wife
\nIn a new dress from Bergdorf’s, walking toward the park.
\nShe cries out, we kiss each other, and walk arm in arm
\nThrough the sunlight that’s much too good for New York,
\nThe sunlight of our own house in the forest.
\nStill, though, the poor things need it . . . We’ve no need
\nTo start out on Proust, to ask each other about Strauss.
\nWe first helped each other, hurt each other, years ago.
\nAfter so many changes made and joys repeated,
\nOur first bewildered, transcending recognition
\nIs pure acceptance. We can’t tell our life
\nFrom our wish. Really I began the day
\nNot with a man’s wish: “May this day be different,”
\nBut with the birds’ wish: “May this day
\nBe the same day, the day of my life.”<\/p>\n

Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes<\/em><\/p>\n

by Billy Collins<\/p>\n

First, her tippet made of tulle,
\neasily lifted off her shoulders and laid
\non the back of a wooden chair.<\/p>\n

And her bonnet,
\nthe bow undone with a light forward pull.<\/p>\n

Then the long white dress, a more
\ncomplicated matter with mother-of-pearl
\nbuttons down the back,
\nso tiny and numerous that it takes forever
\nbefore my hands can part the fabric,
\nlike a swimmer’s dividing water,
\nand slip inside.<\/p>\n

You will want to know
\nthat she was standing
\nby an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
\nmotionless, a little wide-eyed,
\nlooking out at the orchard below,
\nthe white dress puddled at her feet
\non the wide-board, hardwood floor.<\/p>\n

The complexity of women’s undergarments
\nin nineteenth-century America
\nis not to be waved off,
\nand I proceeded like a polar explorer
\nthrough clips, clasps, and moorings,
\ncatches, straps, and whalebone stays,
\nsailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.<\/p>\n

Later, I wrote in a notebook
\nit was like riding a swan into the night,
\nbut, of course, I cannot tell you everything –
\nthe way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
\nhow her hair tumbled free of its pins,
\nhow there were sudden dashes
\nwhenever we spoke.<\/p>\n

What I can tell you is
\nit was terribly quiet in Amherst
\nthat Sabbath afternoon,
\nnothing but a carriage passing the house,
\na fly buzzing in a windowpane.<\/p>\n

So I could plainly hear her inhale
\nwhen I undid the very top
\nhook-and-eye fastener of her corset<\/p>\n

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
\nthe way some readers sigh when they realize
\nthat Hope has feathers,
\nthat reason is a plank,
\nthat life is a loaded gun
\nthat looks right at you with a yellow eye.<\/p>\n

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