LaWanda Walters Poems

The trouble with Jane Eyre
isn't what I thought when I slammed shut the book
on those pictures trying to fly out at me
because I misunderstood, being too young

to read. When you're unable to read a book
you can't understand the illustrations either.
Those were my mother's books, a green bound set
of that one and the book by her sister, Emily.

When you can't understand the artwork
the face at the window is a monster.
It is only Cathy, though, in the book by Brontë's sister,
calling for her lover. And the awful figure bending

over Jane's bed with the candle, that monstrous
creature—well, there are flaws in the mind of Jane, too,
and the awful figure bending over her
might be the tormented wife of Rochester.

There's a flaw in Jane's mind, too,
looking down on the young French child
born to another tormented mother
whom Rochester says has inherited sin.

The young French child likes presents too much,
likes to dance and sing—and so what? She is love-starved,
this child who has supposedly inherited sin,
who will never get the approval of Mr. Rochester.

We lose track of the pretty child who likes to sing.
Jane goes away for a while to prove her purity.
Then, when the other wife dies, Mr. Rochester
will approve. Reader, I married him, she says,

after she has gone away for a while. He is blind
from the fire the crazy wife set. And then, miraculously,
her love asks if she is wearing a blue dress.
I believe she is pregnant, then, carrying a child

who will be a good child, miraculously.
Charlotte Brontë knew only part of the happy ending.
Perhaps he gets better and sees the blue dress.
We have to believe things turn out well,

while Charlotte, herself, had nine months of pleasure
and died. And so the book, which ends as if resolved,
asks us to believe things turn out well, the French girl gone,
Rochester and Jane and the baby in the burned-out

mansion, because books then ended resolutely
and did not reflect how it is to have a calm life,
Rochester and Jane and the baby in the burned-out
mansion, illustrated by the art of the woodcut,

which does not suggest such a calm life,
but a knife and fire making art out of wood,
in a mansion that itself has been sculpted by
fire and breaking things, which is how we really live.
...

remembering, ten years later)

Imagine the kind of love,
the instant-coffee marriage,
that fastness of vows
some could give each other

to jump from the high window
together, holding hands.
Those are stories we can almost bear,
people flying down the towers,

falling with the debris,
lucky enough to lock arms
so in twos or threes
they fell like angels.

Unbearable to watch how some flew
alone, turned upside-down like
a paper doll or a ship's sail.
Unbearable to think of the ones inside.

The ones who jumped
had to leave the burning others
whose pain I have no right
to speak of—whose stories

are as far away as stars.
But some of you gripped hands,
while all those stories were burning
down, you held fast to a strange hand.

It was anyone's hand, and now
the strangest love,
the quickest love of saying Jump with me
and be the one who understands my life.
...