Leaflet on Wooing
Wanting is reposed and plump
As the hands of a Romanov child
Folded in the doeskin sashes of her lap,
Paused before the little war begins.
This one will be guttural, this war.
How is it possible to still be startled
As I am by the oblong silhouette of the coiling
Index finger of a pending death.
No longer will
Wooing be the wondrous
Thing; instead, a homely domesticity, constant
As a field of early rye and yarrow-light.
What one is fit to stand is not what one is
Given, necessarily, and not this night.
Copyright Credit: Lucie Brock-Broido, “Leaflet on Wooing” from Trouble in Mind. Copyright © 2004 by Lucie Brock-Boido. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
Source: Trouble in Mind (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004)