Marianne Boruch
May 2006

Elegy


Before the basil blackened.  Before plates
slept in their cupboard.  Before the streets
were snow.  Before the song started in the throat
or crept sideways into the hands that hold the cello 
or the moon spilled to nonsense all
over the floor.  Before color composed itself
to twenty names for blue, or was it green or was it
red?  Before seeds entered the ground
to transform themselves.  Before cake was eaten, before
the icing bubbled up and crystallized.  Before
all that sugar.  Before shells
when things were moving in them and the sea
made a noise.  Before our son grew so eye
to eye.  Before worms made their fiefdom
in the compost.  Before sleep refused the night
and the clock kept ticking. Before the hospital
took the soul from the body, dark
from dark, and the long drive home.  Before the dog
stopped mid-bark to bark and the cat rose
from her stretch, unblinking. Before every moth
in the flour stilled its wings.  Before the stain,
before its memory in the wood
grew wider.  Before the garden gave everything
to weeds.  Remember that, O charm
to forget, to go back, to vanish?  Before
the dead appeared at the edge of my vision. Before
the grace to be broken was broken.

From Poems: New & Selected (Oberlin College Press, 2004).