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Six Songs on Poems of Margaret Atwood

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REVIEW
Vores's settings fit Torgove's voice like a knife's sheath; they are alert to the harmony of every poem and to every shift of tonality within.
Richard Dyer • The Boston Globe

TEXTS
Circe 
People come from all over to consult me, bringing their limbs which have unaccountably fallen off, they don't know why, my front porch is waist deep in hands, bringing their blood hoarded in pickle jars, bringing their fears about their hearts, which they either can or can't hear at night. They offer me their pain, hoping in return for a word, a word, any word from those they have assaulted daily, with shovels, axes, electric saws.

I spend my days with my head pressed to the earth, to stones, to shrubs, collecting the few muted syllables left over; in the evenings I dispense them, a letter at a time, trying to be fair, to the clamouring suppliants, who have built elaborate staircases across the level ground so they can approach me on their knees. Around me everything is worn down, the grass, the roots, the soil, nothing is left but the bared rock.

Come away with me, he said, we will live on a desert island. I said, I am a desert island. It was not what he had in mind.


They Eat Out
In restaurants we argue
over which of us will pay for your funeral

though the real question is
whether or not I will make you immortal.

At the moment only I
can do it and so

I raise the magic fork
over the plate of beef fried rice

and plunge it into your heart. 
There is a faint pop, a sizzle

and through your own split head
you rise up glowing;

the ceiling opens 
a voice sings Love Is A Many

Splendoured Thing
you hang suspended above the city

in blue tights and a red cape,
your eyes flashing in unison.

The other diners regard you 
some with awe, some only with boredom:

they cannot decide if you are a new weapon
or only a new advertisement.

As for me, I continue eating; 
I liked you better the way you were,
but you were always ambitious.


Siren Song 
This is the one song everyone 
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:

the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see the beached skulls

the song nobody knows
because anyone who has heard
it is dead.

Shall I tell you a secret 
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?

I don't enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical

with these two feathery maniacs,
I don't enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you, 
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique

at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.


At First 
At first I was given centuries
to wait in caves, in leather
tents, knowing you would never come back

The it speeded up: only 
several years between
the day you jangled off
into the mountains, and the day (it was
spring again) I rose from the embroidery
frame at the messenger's entrance.

That happened twice, or was it 
more; and there was once, not so
long ago, you failed,
and came back in a wheelchair
with a moustache and a sunburn
and were insufferable.

Time before last though, I remember
I had a good eight months between
running alongside the train, skirts hitched, handing
you violets in at the window
and opening the letter; I watched
your snapshot fade for twenty years.

And last time (I drove to the airport 
still dressed in my factory 
overalls, the wrench
I had forgotten sticking out of the back
pocket; there you were, 
zippered and helmeted, it was zero
hour, you said Be 
Brave) it was at least three weeks before
I got the telegram and could start regretting.

But recently, the bad evenings
there are only seconds
between the warning on the radio and the
explosion; my hands
don't reach you

and on quieter nights
you jump up from
your chair without even touching your dinner
and I can scarcely kiss you goodbye
before you run out into the street and they shoot


Owl Song 
I am the heart of a murdered woman
who took the wrong way home 
who was strangled in a vacant lot and not buried
who was shot with care beneath a tree
who was mutilated by a crisp knife
There are many of us.

I grew feathers and tore my way out of her;
I am shaped like a feathered heart.
My mouth is a chisel, my hands 
the crimes done by hands.

I sit in the forest talking of death 
which is monotonous: 
though there are many ways of dying
there is only one death song,
the colour of mist:
it says Why Why

I do not want revenge, I do not want expiation,
I only want to ask someone
how I was lost,
how I was lost


Tricks with Mirrors
It's no coincidence
this is a used 
furniture warehouse.

I enter with you
and become a mirror.

Mirrors
are the perfect lovers,

that's it, carry me up the stairs
by the edges, don't drop me,

that would be bad luck, 
throw me on the bed

reflecting side up, 
fall into me,

it will be your own 
mouth you hit, firm and glassy,

your own eyes you find you
are up against closed closed

•

You don't like this metaphor.
All right:

Perhaps I am not a mirror.
perhaps I am a pool.

Think about pools.

Margaret Atwood (b.1939)