Heart’s Needle

BY W. D. SNODGRASS


For Cynthia

When he would not return to fine garments and good food, to his houses and his people, Loingseachan told him, “Your father is dead.” “I’m sorry to hear it,” he said. “Your mother is dead,” said the lad. “All pity for me has gone out of the world.” “Your sister, too, is dead.” “The mild sun rests on every ditch,” he said; “a sister loves even though not loved.” “Suibhne, your daughter is dead.” “And an only daughter is the needle of the heart.” “And Suibhne, your little boy, who used to call you “Daddy”—he is dead.” “Aye,” said Suibhne, “that’s the drop that brings a man to the ground.”
He fell out of the yew tree; Loingseachan closed his arms around him and placed him in manacles.

—AFTER THE MIDDLE-IRISH ROMANCE, THE MADNESS OF SUIBHNE


1

Child of my winter, born

When the new fallen soldiers froze

In Asia’s steep ravines and fouled the snows,

When I was torn


By love I could not still,

By fear that silenced my cramped mind

To that cold war where, lost, I could not find

My peace in my will,


All those days we could keep

Your mind a landscape of new snow

Where the chilled tenant-farmer finds, below,

His fields asleep



In their smooth covering, white

As quilts to warm the resting bed

Of birth or pain, spotless as paper spread

For me to write,



And thinks: Here lies my land

Unmarked by agony, the lean foot

Of the weasel tracking, the thick trapper’s boot;

And I have planned



My chances to restrain

The torments of demented summer or

Increase the deepening harvest here before

It snows again.



2

Late April and you are three; today

We dug your garden in the yard.

To curb the damage of your play,

Strange dogs at night and the moles tunneling,

Four slender sticks of lath stand guard

Uplifting their thin string.



So you were the first to tramp it down.

And after the earth was sifted close

You brought your watering can to drown

All earth and us. But these mixed seeds are pressed

With light loam in their steadfast rows.

Child, we’ve done our best.



Someone will have to weed and spread

The young sprouts. Sprinkle them in the hour

When shadow falls across their bed.

You should try to look at them every day

Because when they come to full flower

I will be away.



3

The child between them on the street

Comes to a puddle, lifts his feet

And hangs on their hands. They start

At the live weight and lurch together,

Recoil to swing him through the weather,

Stiffen and pull apart.



We read of cold war soldiers that

Never gained ground, gave none, but sat

Tight in their chill trenches.

Pain seeps up from some cavity

Through the ranked teeth in sympathy;

The whole jaw grinds and clenches



Till something somewhere has to give.

It’s better the poor soldiers live

In someone else’s hands

Than drop where helpless powers fall

On crops and barns, on towns where all

Will burn. And no man stands.



For good, they sever and divide

Their won and lost land. On each side

Prisoners are returned

Excepting a few unknown names.

The peasant plods back and reclaims

His fields that strangers burned



And nobody seems very pleased.

It’s best. Still, what must not be seized

Clenches the empty fist.

I tugged your hand, once, when I hated

Things less: a mere game dislocated

The radius of your wrist.



Love’s wishbone, child, although I’ve gone

As men must and let you be drawn

Off to appease another,

It may help that a Chinese play

Or Solomon himself might say

I am your real mother.



4

No one can tell you why

the season will not wait;

the night I told you I

must leave, you wept a fearful rate

to stay up late.



Now that it’s turning Fall,

we go to take our walk

among municipal

flowers, to steal one off its stalk,

to try and talk.



We huff like windy giants

scattering with our breath

gray-headed dandelions;

Spring is the cold wind's aftermath.

The poet saith.



But the asters, too, are gray,

ghost-gray. Last night’s cold

is sending on their way

petunias and dwarf marigold,

hunched sick and old.



Like nerves caught in a graph,

the morning-glory vines

frost has erased by half

still scrawl across their rigid twines.

Like broken lines



of verses I can’t make.

In its unraveling loom

we find a flower to take,

with some late buds that might still bloom,

back to your room.



Night comes and the stiff dew.

I’m told a friend’s child cried

because a cricket, who

had minstreled every night outside

her window, died.



5

Winter again and it is snowing;

Although you are still three,

You are already growing

Strange to me.



You chatter about new playmates, sing

Strange songs; you do not know

Hey ding-a-ding-a-ding

Or where I go



Or when I sang for bedtime, Fox

Went out on a chilly night,

Before I went for walks

And did not write;



You never mind the squalls and storms

That are renewed long since;

Outside the thick snow swarms

Into my prints



And swirls out by warehouses, sealed,

Dark cowbarns, huddled, still,

Beyond to the blank field,

The fox’s hill



Where he backtracks and sees the paw,

Gnawed off, he cannot feel;

Conceded to the jaw

Of toothed, blue steel.



6

Easter has come around

again; the river is rising

over the thawed ground

and the banksides. When you come you bring

an egg dyed lavender.

We shout along our bank to hear

our voices returning from the hills to meet us.

We need the landscape to repeat us.



You lived on this bank first.

While nine months filled your term, we knew

how your lungs, immersed

in the womb, miraculously grew

their useless folds till

the fierce, cold air rushed in to fill

them out like bushes thick with leaves. You took your hour,

caught breath, and cried with your full lung power.



Over the stagnant bight

we see the hungry bank swallow

flaunting his free flight

still; we sink in mud to follow

the killdeer from the grass

that hides her nest. That March there was

rain; the rivers rose; you could hear killdeers flying

all night over the mudflats crying.



You bring back how the red-

winged blackbird shrieked, slapping frail wings,

diving at my head—

I saw where her tough nest, cradled, swings

in tall reeds that must sway

with the winds blowing every way.

If you recall much, you recall this place. You still

live nearby—on the opposite hill.



After the sharp windstorm

of July Fourth, all that summer

through the gentle, warm

afternoons, we heard great chain saws chirr

like iron locusts. Crews

of roughneck boys swarmed to cut loose

branches wrenched in the shattering wind, to hack free

all the torn limbs that could sap the tree.



In the debris lay

starlings, dead. Near the park’s birdrun

we surprised one day

a proud, tan-spatted, buff-brown pigeon.

In my hands she flapped so

fearfully that I let her go.

Her keeper came. And we helped snarl her in a net.

You bring things I’d as soon forget.



You raise into my head

a Fall night that I came once more

to sit on your bed;

sweat beads stood out on your arms and fore-

head and you wheezed for breath,

for help, like some child caught beneath

its comfortable woolly blankets, drowning there.

Your lungs caught and would not take the air.



Of all things, only we

have power to choose that we should die;

nothing else is free

in this world to refuse it. Yet I,

who say this, could not raise

myself from bed how many days

to the thieving world. Child, I have another wife,

another child. We try to choose our life.



7

Here in the scuffled dust

is our ground of play.

I lift you on your swing and must

shove you away,

see you return again,

drive you off again, then



stand quiet till you come.

You, though you climb

higher, farther from me, longer,

will fall back to me stronger.

Bad penny, pendulum,

you keep my constant time



to bob in blue July

where fat goldfinches fly

over the glittering, fecund

reach of our growing lands.

Once more now, this second,

I hold you in my hands.



8

I thumped on you the best I could

which was no use;

you would not tolerate your food

until the sweet, fresh milk was soured

with lemon juice.



That puffed you up like a fine yeast.

The first June in your yard

like some squat Nero at a feast

you sat and chewed on white, sweet clover.

That is over.



When you were old enough to walk

we went to feed

the rabbits in the park milkweed;

saw the paired monkeys, under lock,

consume each other's salt.



Going home we watched the slow

stars follow us down Heaven’s vault.

You said, let’s catch one that comes low,

pull off its skin

and cook it for our dinner.



As absentee bread-winner,

I seldom got you such cuisine;

we ate in local restaurants

or bought what lunches we could pack

in a brown sack



with stale, dry bread to toss for ducks

on the green-scummed lagoons,

crackers for porcupine and fox,

life-savers for the footpad coons

to scour and rinse,



snatch after in their muddy pail



and stare into their paws.

When I moved next door to the jail

I learned to fry

omelettes and griddlecakes so I



could set you supper at my table.

As I built back from helplessness,

when I grew able,

the only possible answer was

you had to come here less.



This Hallowe’en you come one week.

You masquerade

as a vermilion, sleek,

fat, crosseyed fox in the parade

or, where grim jackolanterns leer,



go with your bag from door to door

foraging for treats. How queer:

when you take off your mask

my neighbors must forget and ask

whose child you are.



Of course you lose your appetite,

whine and won’t touch your plate;

as local law

I set your place on an orange crate

in your own room for days. At night



you lie asleep there on the bed

and grate your jaw.

Assuredly your father’s crimes

are visited

on you. You visit me sometimes.



The time’s up. Now our pumpkin sees

me bringing your suitcase.

He holds his grin;

the forehead shrivels, sinking in.

You break this year’s first crust of snow



off the runningboard to eat.

We manage, though for days

I crave sweets when you leave and know

they rot my teeth. Indeed our sweet

foods leave us cavities.



9

I get numb and go in

though the dry ground will not hold

the few dry swirls of snow

and it must not be very cold.

A friend asks how you’ve been

and I don’t know



or see much right to ask.

Or what use it could be to know.

In three months since you came

the leaves have fallen and the snow;

your pictures pinned above my desk

seem much the same.



Somehow I come to find

myself upstairs in the third floor

museum’s halls,

walking to kill my time once more

among the enduring and resigned

stuffed animals,



where, through a century’s

caprice, displacement and

known treachery between

its wars, they hear some old command

and in their peaceable kingdoms freeze

to this still scene,



Nature Morte. Here

by the door, its guardian,

the patchwork dodo stands

where you and your stepsister ran

laughing and pointing. Here, last year,

you pulled my hands



and had your first, worst quarrel,

so toys were put up on your shelves.

Here in the first glass cage

the little bobcats arch themselves,

still practicing their snarl

of constant rage.



The bison, here, immense,

shoves at his calf, brow to brow,

and looks it in the eye

to see what is it thinking now.

I forced you to obedience;

I don’t know why.



Still the lean lioness

beyond them, on her jutting ledge

of shale and desert shrub,

stands watching always at the edge,

stands hard and tanned and envious

above her cub;



with horns locked in tall heather,

two great Olympian Elk stand bound,

fixed in their lasting hate

till hunger brings them both to ground.

Whom equal weakness binds together

none shall separate.



Yet separate in the ocean

of broken ice, the white bear reels

beyond the leathery groups

of scattered, drab Arctic seals

arrested here in violent motion

like Napoleon’s troops.



Our states have stood so long

at war, shaken with hate and dread,

they are paralyzed at bay;

once we were out of reach, we said,

we would grow reasonable and strong.

Some other day.



Like the cold men of Rome,

we have won costly fields to sow

in salt, our only seed.

Nothing but injury will grow.

I write you only the bitter poems

that you can’t read.



Onan who would not breed

a child to take his brother’s bread

and be his brother’s birth,

rose up and left his lawful bed,

went out and spilled his seed

in the cold earth.



I stand by the unborn,

by putty-colored children curled

in jars of alcohol,

that waken to no other world,

unchanging, where no eye shall mourn.

I see the caul



that wrapped a kitten, dead.

I see the branching, doubled throat

of a two-headed foal;

I see the hydrocephalic goat;

here is the curled and swollen head,

there, the burst skull;



skin of a limbless calf;

a horse’s foetus, mummified;

mounted and joined forever,

the Siamese twin dogs that ride

belly to belly, half and half,

that none shall sever.



I walk among the growths,

by gangrenous tissue, goiter, cysts,

by fistulas and cancers,

where the malignancy man loathes

is held suspended and persists.

And I don’t know the answers.



The window’s turning white.

The world moves like a diseased heart

packed with ice and snow.

Three months now we have been apart

less than a mile. I cannot fight

or let you go.



10

The vicious winter finally yields

the green winter wheat;

the farmer, tired in the tired fields

he dare not leave, will eat.



Once more the runs come fresh; prevailing

piglets, stout as jugs,

harry their old sow to the railing

to ease her swollen dugs



and game colts trail the herded mares

that circle the pasture courses;

our seasons bring us back once more

like merry-go-round horses.



With crocus mouths, perennial hungers,

into the park Spring comes;

we roast hot dogs on old coat hangers

and feed the swan bread crumbs,



pay our respects to the peacocks, rabbits,

and leathery Canada goose

who took, last Fall, our tame white habits

and now will not turn loose.



In full regalia, the pheasant cocks

march past their dubious hens;

the porcupine and the lean, red fox

trot around bachelor pens



and the miniature painted train

wails on its oval track:

you said, I’m going to Pennsylvania!

and waved. And you’ve come back.



If I loved you, they said I’d leave

and find my own affairs.

Well, once again this April, we’ve

come around to the bears;



punished and cared for, behind bars,

the coons on bread and water

stretch thin black fingers after ours.

And you are still my daughter.