The Tent

trying with all her might
not to sink below the line
between chin up and despair—

and who was carted away
and locked up, because one day
she began screaming and wouldn’t stop,
and did something very bad
with the kitchen scissors—

But that wasn’t you, not you, not
the Mom we had in mind, it was
the nutty lady down the street—
it was just some lady
who became a casualty
of unseen accidents,
and then a lurid story…)

Come back, come back, oh Mom,
from craziness or death
or our own damaged memory—
appear as you were:

Queen of the waffle iron,
generous dispenser of toothpaste,
sorceress of Mercurochrome,
player of games of smoky bridge
at which you won second-prize dishtowels,
brooder over the darning egg
that hatched nothing but socks,
boiler of horrible porridge—
climb back onto the cake-mix package,
look brisk and competent, the way you used to—

If only we could call you—
Here Mom, Here Mom—
and you would come clip-clopping
on your daytime Cuban heels,
smelling of sink and lilac,
(your bum encased in the foundation garment
you’d peel off at night
with a sigh like a marsh exhaling),
saying, What is it now,
and we could catch you
in a net, and cage you
in your bungalow, where you belong,
and make you stay—

Then everything would be all right
the way it was when we could play
till after dark on spring evenings,
then sleep without fear
because you threw yourself in front of the fear
and stopped it with your body—

And there you’ll be, in your cotton housecoat,
holding a wooden peg
between your teeth, as the washing flaps
on the clothesline you once briefly considered
hanging yourself with—

but forget that! There you’ll be,
singing a song of your own youth
as though no time has passed,
and we can be careless again,
and embarrassed by you,
and ignore you as we used to,

and the holes in the world will be mended.

III.

HORATIO’S VERSION

Absent thee from felicity awhile, and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story…

These were Hamlet’s last words to me. Well, almost the last. I didn’t know at the time that this wasn’t a request but a command—in effect, a clever and twisted curse. I would be doomed to stay alive until I did tell the story. Which is why you are reading my own words, in this very newspaper, today.

Yes, this is Horatio speaking: friend, confidant, ear-for-loan, eternal bystander at the festivities and debacles of the great and bloodthirsty. I have to say that I did my best as second banana during the Elsinore affair.