Lisel Mueller Poems

Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
...

When the moon was full they came to the water.
some with pitchforks, some with rakes,
some with sieves and ladles,
and one with a silver cup.
...

In Sleeping Beauty's castle
the clock strikes one hundred years
and the girl in the tower returns to the world.
So do the servants in the kitchen,
...

What happened is, we grew lonely
living among the things,
so we gave the clock a face,
the chair a back,
...

For Linda Foster


I
...

The laughter of women sets fire
to the Halls of Injustice
and the false evidence burns
to a beautiful white lightness
...

If an inaudible whistle
blown between our lips
can send him home to us,
then silence is perhaps
...

Speaking of marvels, I am alive
together with you, when I might have been
alive with anyone under the sun,
when I might have been Abelard's woman
...

In 1936, a child
in Hitler's Germany,
what did I know about the war in Spain?
Andalusia was a tango
...

I. Insomnia

The bulb at the front door burns and burns.
If it were a white rose it would tire of blooming
...