The Best American Poetry 1997 by James Tate & David Lehman

Author:James Tate & David Lehman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SCRIBNER POETRY
Published: 1997-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

ROSANNA WARREN

Diversion

from The New Republic

Go, I say to myself, tired of my notebooks and my reluctant pen,

go water the newly transplanted sorrel and dill,

spriggy yet in their new humus and larger clay pots;

water artemisia, salvia, centaurea

which are classical, perennial, and have promised to spread their nimbus

of violet and silver through our patchy backyard

for summers to come, from poor soil.

Then I’ll return indoors to the words copied

on the yellow legal pad,

her words

which I cannot shape,

which sentence me:

“There are things I prefer to forget—”

(what things?) “Just,

things—” “Darling, I can’t

locate myself—” “Where

are you?”

and if she, in her compassion, forgets

or doesn’t know, I will perennially remember,

how I erase these messages

I later transcribe: one punch

of one button on the answering machine—

and how, with cruel

helpfulness

I have asked:

“Don’t you remember?”

restoring to her a garden of incident

which she cannot keep, water, or tend,

and which will die, soon, from her ministrations.

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