Louise Gluck Poems

Now, in twilight, on the palace steps
the king asks forgiveness of his lady.

He is not
...

Love of my life, you
Are lost and I am
Young again.
...

Late December: my father and I
are going to New York, to the circus.
He holds me
on his shoulders in the bitter wind:
...

I became a criminal when I fell in love.
Before that I was a waitress.

I didn't want to go to Chicago with you.
...

The nights have grown cool again, like the nights
Of early spring, and quiet again. Will
Speech disturb you? We're
Alone now; we have no reason for silence.
...

As a man and woman make
a garden between them like
a bed of stars, here
they linger in the summer evening
...

Look, a butterfly. Did you make a wish?

You don't wish on butterflies.
...

In the empty field, in the morning,
the body waits to be claimed.
The spirit sits beside it, on a small rock--
nothing comes to give it form again.
...

The garden admires you.
For your sake it smears itself with green pigment,
The ecstatic reds of the roses,
So that you will come to it with your lovers.
...

Reading what I have just written, I now believe
I stopped precipitously, so that my story seems to have been
slightly distorted, ending, as it did, not abruptly
...