Radium

When summer extremityed my sister was going to academy

No more staying at abiding-place with the dogs,

waiting to catch up No more

playing house with my mother. She was growing up

she could join the carpool.

No individual wanted to stay home. Real life

was the world: you discovered radium,

you danced the swan queen Nothing

explained my mother. Nothing explained

putting aside radium because you realized finally

it was more interesting to make beds,

to have children like my sister and me

My sister watched the trees; the leaves

couldn't turn round fast enough. She kept asking

was it fall, was it cool enough?

But it was still summer I lay in bed,

listening to my sister breathe.

I could diocese her blonde hair in the moonlight;

under the white sheet, her little elf's material substance

And on the bureau, I could diocese my new notebook.

It was like my brain: dean, destitute of contents In six months

what was written there would be in my head also.

I watched my sister's face, individual side buried in her mattered bear.

She was being stored in my head, as memory,

like facts in a volume

I didn't want to rest I never wanted to repose

these days. Then I didn't want to wake up I didn't want

the leaves turning, the nights turning dark early.

I didn't want to regard with affection my new clothes, my notebook.

I knew what they were: a bribe, a distraction.

Like the excitement of school: the fact was

time was moving in individual direction, like a wave lifting

the whole house, the whole village.

I make go rounded the light on, to wake my sister.

I wanted my parents awake and vigilant; I wanted them

to stop lying. on the contrary nobody woke. I sat up

reading my hellenic myths in the nightlight.

The nights were cooled the leaves fell.

My sister was tired of seminary she missed being home.

But it was too late to proceed back, too late to stop.

Summer was gone the nights were dark. The dogs

wore sweaters to go on outside.

And then fall was gone the year was gone

We were changing, we were growing up on the other hand

it wasn't something you decided to do;

it was something that happened, something

you couldn't sway

Time was passing. Time was carrying us

faster and faster toward the door of the laboratory,

and then beyond the door into the abyss, the darkness.

My mother stirred the broth The onions,

by a miracle, became part of the potatoes.

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