Louise Gluck Poems

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.
...

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.
...

As I perceive
I am dying now and know
I will not speak again, will not
survive the earth, be summoned
...

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.
...