Poet Island Press

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3 Poems by Linda Gregg

POSTED 2007-05-28 IN POEMS

Linda Gregg has been the recipient of many awards for her work, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Foundation Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Whiting Writer's Award, as well as multiple Pushcart Prizes. She was the 2003 winner of the Sara Teasdale Award and the 2006 PEN/Voelcker Award winner for Poetry.

PARIAN MARBLE

I was walking in the fields with a friend
and asked what the farmers do when they plow up
something extraordinary. He said it depends
on what its worth. They take it to a middleman.
“Look at that,” I said, and picked up a five-pound
marble head of Eros. The cheeks protected
the smile but otherwise it was beaten up.
A crack down the forehead and under one eye
made it seem to be frowning. Behind us were
four bushes: sage, thyme, oregano, mirtia.
The sun was going down. I would like to hold
something up against the ruin. To show how the heart
and spirit pass the test. The look on the face
was understanding and blissful. The light changed
and I hid it inside a bush for another two thousand years.

ENTER WITH CAUTION

There will be the smell of Greek sunlight with her
when she walks from the train to the tram that goes
to Monastiraki Square. She will walk to the brothel-
turned-hotel from there. The next day there will be
the smell of crude oil on the freighter from Piraeus
to an island. She will be watching almond trees on
the mountain for the most of the next seven years after that.
A goat bleating near its mother by the stone house.
The well-cover bangs shut in October.
The sea is too strong all winter, roaring
even when it’s silent. Covering her head completely
when she walks to town along the edge of the shore.
The shepherd-boy sitting on a table at the back
of the taverna, surrounded by happy farmers giving him
wine to drink. Buying fresh donuts from the man carrying
them through the village on his head every Monday.
Swimming in the sea all afternoon, then eating
the melon. Twelve-year-old Stephanie in only the bottom
of her bathing suit, standing with great bunches of grapes,
laughing and jumping up and down in the aqua water.
Walking to the mountain where gods have been honored,
the brightness of the sun stunning. Seeing broken
libation cups in the weeds. Living alone with
the magnitude. So close to the laws of its nature.

GETTING VALUE

My elderly friend of many years arrived
last winter at my door with his nose
dripping onto the floor, and shaking
so hard you could hear his teeth clatter.
It was hard to get his clothes off
and him onto the sofa bed in my living room.
Filling me with memories of what
he used to be. What the French call
“monsters.” (Like Rodin.) His poetry is
deeper now. Bigger, and more tender
than ever. We wonder about the newness
of the old. And how much is missing.
He forgets names and directions.
Surely there is a hollowing out,
but how much that is left is more than
the past was? Shakespeare who stopped
writing. And the crippled Leonardo.
What about our very old god who is
now making his problematical children?

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