The circle game

The children on the lawn

joined hand to hand

go round and round

each arm going into

the next arm, around

full circle

until it comes

back into each of the single

bodies again

They are singing, but

not to each other:

their feet move

almost in time to the singing

We can see

the concentration on

their faces, their eyes

fixed on the empty

moving spaces just in

front of them.

We might mistake this

tranced moving for joy

but there is no joy in it

We can see (arm in arm)

as we watch them go

round and round

intent, almost

studious (the grass

underfoot ignored, the trees

circling the lawn

ignored, the lake ignored)

that the whole point

for them

of going round and round

is (faster

slower)

going round and round

Being with you

here, in this room

is like groping through a mirror

whose glass has melted

to the consistency

of gelatin

You refuse to be

(and I)

an exact reflection, yet

will not walk from the glass,

be separate.

Anyway, it is right

that they have put

so many mirrors here

(chipped, hung crooked)

in this room with its high transom

and empty wardrobe; even

the back of the door

has one.

There are people in the next room

arguing, opening and closing drawers

(the walls are thin)

You look past me, listening

to them, perhaps, or

watching

your own reflection somewhere

behind my head,

over my shoulder

You shift, and the bed

sags under us, losing its focus

there is someone in the next room

there is always

(your face

remote, listening)

someone in the next room.

iii

However,

in all their games

there seems

to be some reason

however

abstract they

at first appear

When we read them legends

in the evening

of monstrous battles, and secret

betrayals in the forest

and brutal deaths,

they scarcely listened;

one yawned and fidgeted; another

chewed the wooden handle

of a hammer;

the youngest one examined

a slight cut on his toe,

and we wondered how

they could remain

completely without fear

or even interest

as the final sword slid through

the dying hero.

The next night

walking along the beach

we found the trenches

they had been making:

fortified with pointed sticks

driven into the sides

of their sand moats

and a lake-enclosed island

with no bridges:

a last attempt

(however

eroded by the water

in an hour)

to make

maybe, a refuge human

and secure from the reach

of whatever walks along

(sword hearted)

these night beaches.

Returning to the room:

I notice how

all your word-

plays, calculated ploys

of the body, the witticisms

of touch, are now

attempts to keep me

at a certain distance

and (at length) avoid

admitting I am here

I watch you

watching my face

indifferently

yet with the same taut curiosity

with which you might regard

a suddenly discovered part

of your own body:

a wart perhaps,

and I remember that

you said

in childhood you were

a tracer of maps

(not making but) moving

a pen or a forefinger

over the courses of the rivers,

the different colours

that mark the rise of mountains;

a memorizer

of names (to hold

these places

in their proper places)

So now you trace me

like a country’s boundary

or a strange new wrinkle in

your own wellknown skin

and I am fixed, stuck

down on the outspread map

of this room, of your mind’s continent

(here and yet not here, like

the wardrobe and the mirrors

the voices through the wall

your body ignored on the bed),

transfixed

by your eyes’

cold blue thumbtacks

The children like the block

of grey stone that was once a fort

but now is a museum:

especially

they like the guns

and the armour brought from

other times and countries

and when they go home

their drawings will be full

for some days, of swords

archaic sunburst maces

broken spears

and vivid red explosions.

While they explore

the cannons

(they aren’t our children)

we walk outside along

the earthworks, noting

how they are crumbling

under the unceasing

attacks of feet and flower roots;

The weapons

that were once outside

sharpening themselves on war

are now indoors

there, in the fortress,

fragile

in glass cases;

Why is it

(I’m thinking

of the careful moulding

round the stonework archways)

that in this time, such

elaborate defences keep

things that are no longer

(much)

worth defending?

And you play the safe game

the orphan game

the ragged winter game

that says, I am alone

(hungry: I know you want me

to play it also)

the game of the waif who stands

at every picture window,

shivering, pinched nose pressed

against the glass, the snow

collecting on his neck,

watching the happy families

(a game of envy)

Yet he despises them: they are so

Victorian Christmas-card:

the cheap paper shows

under the pigments of

their cheerful fire-

places and satin-

ribboned suburban laughter

and they have their own forms

of parlour

games: father and mother

playing father and mother

He’s glad

to be left

out by himself

in the cold

(hugging himself).

When I tell you this,

you say (with a smile fake

as a tinsel icicle):

You do it too.

Which in some ways

is a lie, but also I suppose

is right, as usual:

although I tend to pose

in other seasons

outside other windows.

vii

Summer again;

in the mirrors of this room

the children wheel, singing

the same song;

This casual bed

scruffy as dry turf,

the counterpane

rumpled with small burrows, is

their grassy lawn

and these scuffed walls

contain their circling trees,

that low clogged sink

their lake

(a wasp comes,

drawn by the piece of sandwich

left on the nearby beach

(how carefully you do

such details);

one of the children flinches

but won’t let go)

You make them

turn and turn, according to

the closed rules of your games,

but there is no joy in it

and as we lie

arm in arm, neither

joined nor separate

(your observations change me

to a spineless woman in

a cage of bones, obsolete fort

pulled inside out),

our lips moving

almost in time to their singing,

listening to the opening

and closing of the drawers

in the next room

(of course there is always

danger but where

would you locate it)

(the children spin

a round cage of glass

from the warm air

with their thread-thin

insect voices)

and as we lie

here, caught

in the monotony of wandering

from room to room, shifting

the place of our defences,

I want to break

these bones, your prisoning rhythms

(winter,

summer)

all the glass cases,

erase all maps,

crack the protecting

eggshell of your turning

singing children:

I want the circle

broken.

Source: Selected Poems (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1976)