The Seven Ages by Louise Gluck

Author:Louise Gluck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2021-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

Rain in Summer

We were supposed to be, all of us,

a circle, a line at every point

equally weighted or tensed, equally

close to the center. I saw it

differently. In my mind, my parents

were the circle; my sister and I

were trapped inside.

Long Island. Terrible

storms off the Atlantic, summer rain

hitting the gray shingles. I watched

the copper beech, the dark leaves turning

a sort of lacquered ebony. It seemed to be

secure, as secure as the house.

It made sense to be housebound.

We were anyway: we couldn’t change who we were.

We couldn’t change even the smallest facts:

our long hair parted in the center,

secured with two barrettes. We embodied

those ideas of my mother’s

not appropriate to adult life.

Ideas of childhood: how to look, how to act.

Ideas of spirit: what gifts to claim, to develop.

Ideas of character: how to be driven, how to prevail,

how to triumph in the true manner of greatness

without seeming to lift a finger.

It was all going on much too long:

childhood, summer. But we were safe;

we lived in a closed form.

Piano lessons. Poems, drawings. Summer rain

hammering at the circle. And the mind

developing within fixed conditions

a few tragic assumptions: we felt safe,

meaning we saw the world as dangerous.

We would prevail or conquer, meaning

we saw homage as love.

My sister and I stared out

into the violence of the summer rain.

It was obvious to us two people couldn’t

prevail at the same time. My sister

took my hand, reaching across the flowered cushions.

Neither of us could see, yet,

the cost of any of this.

But she was frightened, she trusted me.

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