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Household Tales

TEXTS
Out of this World I Shall Discover Horses
Once two angels hiding in horses
bore the smoke and spit of me 

over the field of my parents' desire
and bound me into my body, saying: 

Your body will grow.
Go the way of the world.
We will never leave you. 

So I was born and did not forget them.
Two horses. 

Tonight in the twilight
I can't tell 

horses from angels. Tonight
what carried me into this world
will carry me out of it. 
Nancy Willard (b.1936) 


First Goddess: Deverra
The string broke.
The beads scattered.
I could never collect my wits
if not for you, Deverra, 

inventor of brooms.
What worried my feet
is brushed aside. 

By moonlight I make
a clean sweep;
ten blue beads,
two pennies, 

and a silver pin.
“There is great luck in pins,”
says my mother, 

an honest woman
who never lets a pin lie,
not even a crooked one.
“Sweep dust out the door 

and lose your luck,”
says my grandmother,
the unconsecrated Bishop of Dust 

and Adviser to Ashes,
herding the lowly together
from dust to dust.
“Don't throw yourself away 

on the first man that asks you.”
Outside the rain glistens.
I am as patient as cat's tongues. 

By moonlight I take stock.
Kneeling in dust
at this miniature market.
I pick and choose. 

What is not lost to sight
is not lost, says the moon,
rinsed clear 

as if my mother
ride her broom over it,
lifting the clouds
and letting down 

columns of moonlight. 
A little temple.
A little night music. 
Nancy Willard (b.1936) 


Second Goddess: Juno Lucina
By moonlight I see
the anger of shoes,
their laces clenched into knots. 

I take the shoes in my lap.
I loosen their tongues.
I take both sides 

of the quarrel:
left strand,
right strand. 

“When you were born,” says my mother,
“the midwife untied
shoes, curtains,
everything.”
Nevertheless, I came
with the cord round my neck, 

tied like a dog
to my mother's darkness.
The goddess found me. 

Her left hand carried the moon,
her right hand lay open like a flower,
empty. Feet first, I followed. 

The midwife knocked
breath into me
and knotted that cord for good. 

Hush, said the goddess.
Your mother's calling.
You can make it alone now. 
Nancy Willard (b.1936) 


The Argument of his Book
I sing of Brooks, of Blossomes, Birds, and Bowers,
Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers;
I sing of May-poles, Hock-carts, Wassails, Wakes,
Of Bridegrooms, Brides, and of their Bridall-cakes.
I write of Youth, of Love, and have accesse
By these, to sing of cleanly-Wantonesse;
I sing of Dewes, of Raines, and, piece by piece,
Of Balme, of Oyl, of Spice, and Amber-Greece;
I sing of Times trans-shifting; and I write
How Roses first came Red, and Lillies White;
I write of Groves, of Twilights, and I sing
The court of Mab, and of the Faerie-King.
I write of Hell; I sing (and ever shall)
Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all. 
Robert Herrick (1591–1674) 


The Five Versions of the Icicle
They are the sun's wet nurse, said the mother,
and it milks them to nothing. 

They are stockings, said the laundress,
and grievously shrunken. 

They are noodles in a broth of diamonds, said the cook,
and they are sausages oiled with light. 

They are the parsnips of heaven, said the gardener,
that cannot be grown out of season. 

They are the urns of grief, said the widow.
They live on their own tears. 
Nancy Willard (b.1936) 


How the Hen Sold her Eggs to the Stingy Priest
An egg is a grand thing for a journey 

It will make you a small meal on the road
and a shape most serviceable to the hand 

for darning socks, and for barter
a purse of gold opens doors anywhere. 

If I wished for a world better than this one
I would keep, in an egg till it was wanted, 

the gold earth floating on a clear sea.
If I wished for an angel, that would be my way, 

the wings of gold waiting to wake,
the feet in gold waiting to walk, 

and the heart that no one believed in
beating and beating the gold alive. 
Nancy Willard (b.1936) 


How Violets Came Blew
Love on a day (wise poets tell)
Some time in wrangling spent,
Whether the Violets sho'd excell,
Or she, in sweetest scent. 

But Venus, having lost the day,
Poore Girles, she fell on you;
And beat ye so, (as some dare say)
Her blowes did make ye blew. 

*

How Marigolds Came Yellow
Jealous Girles these sometimes were, 
While they liv'd, or lasted here:
Turn'd to Flowers, still they be
Yellow, mark't for Jealousie. 

*

How Roses Came Red
'Tis said, as Cupid danc't among
The Gods, he down the Nectar flung:
Which, on the white Rose being shed,
Made it for ever after red. 
Robert Herrick (1591–1674) 


The Healers
Under your foot at dusk, smell
the compassionate herbs. Their being 

is being broken for our need.
Periwinkle, joy of the ground 

maketh a meek stomach and a good heart.”
O, caraway in comfits, fennel and seed 

of vervain, the simples of grace,
heal us of witchcraft and wagging teeth. 

Comforters of the aged and blind,
you make the sinner chaste. 

Carried like a staff, you open the dark.
Watchman, what of the night? And you 

the servant whose waiting we hardly see:
I am here. Take me. 
Nancy Willard (b.1936) 


Change of Life
Ashes of roses, forsythia bones
tulips with blackened teeth,
let me read in you
what became of the young girl in the legend
who so craved honey
that her entire life was changed by it. 

When she lay down
roses sprang from her side
her body became a trellis
for ardent tropical blooms
with corollas so deep 
you could drown in them,
disappearing in those mysterious caves. 

In this way the bees found her;
in the laboratory of the hive
they are transforming her into an old woman,
drained, shrivelled, and unsexual
like a quince blossom mutilated by the frost.
She has been rendered to her essences;
her voice comes to you through the lips of a crone. 
Constance Urdang (b.1922) 


In Which, by Good Luck, I Lose Nearly Everything
Dreaming of Bread, I dreamed of you, 
how night after night we wrestled for joy.
Now leaf by leaf you are letting me go. 

Some night may I be able to meet
you without hunger,
having forgotten the shine and the taste of you. 
Nancy Willard (b.1936) 


Arbor
As a child she planted
these roses, these vines
heavy with trumpets and honey. 

Now at the end of her life
she asks for an arbor. At night
she sees roses rooted in heaven, 

wisteria hanging its vineyards
over her head, all green things
climbing, climbing. 

She wants to walk through this door,
not as she walks to the next
room but to another place 

altogether. She will leave her cane
at the door but the door is
necessary. She knows how the raw 

space in a wall nearly burned or
newly born makes children pause
and step in. It leads somewhere. 

They look out on another country. 
Nancy Willard (b.1936)