MONDAY

The baskets of towels left by the curl-chested lover

Are washed in the mountain stream and dried in the light

Of the mid-day moon. The washerwoman, fed on buttered bread,

Remembers the snuggling on the sheets and carries in her womb

The blunt-headed seeds and aches. Her back breaks from

Washing and all her body is limp from

Him who thrusts upon her the weight of love.

Such a woman, her fair face turned to the moon's tide,

Must have been my great grandmother, on the German,

The paternal side, a name lost,

Now, to some unknown Ohio grave,

Her husband a cobbler, the same whose

Tools I display on the mantel, antiques

For which I have no use, next to his picture,

A daguerreotype, a mere boy in puffed shirt-sleeves,

My great grandfather, whose name I do know,

Jakob, a murderer. I am so nervous. It must be

The sins of the fathers. It is him I must blame.

But my heart reaches out to that woman

Who did his wash on Monday, the moon's day,

Her life and the triumph of her broken sorrow.

TUESDAY

My graceful string bean sister naked lay, when she was ten,

A Tuesday, under mother's ironing board. The iron

Slid off and seared her tight-lipped crotch. There was a rush

To have the burns anointed, an ambulance

Sirened through the streets and, in EMERGENCY,

The interns performed a laying on of hands.

She did not whimper even when a nurse re-wound

Her wounds nor cry out to family visitors

Her pain -- "A little soldier," so my father said.

Well, to make the long story short, she married,

Had three sons, lived well and long, died

An easy death; but no man -- husband, son, or brother --

Since that cauterizing fire fell from Mars or Tiw,

Ever satisfied her deep-down central pleasures.

WEDNESDAY

My father, a mercurial merchant, told me

About flowers and, once, about sex, the fool,

He made a vegetable soup the like of which

No cook ever made again. He did not love me

And I am full of woe because he did not love me.

At the ripe age of 42 I wish to mend

What was torn between us. Dad, where are you?

I am mad with that question, "wod" as Chaucer

Used to say. And my father is dead, in a grave,

And I am a father, my son looks up to me, I

Slap him for talking back. Father, son, let's

Begin again. Let's go out to a valley, farms

Around, green grass and crimson clover,

Bees, and little animals benign, owls

Blinking, lay ourselves out beside a stream,

Naked, lounge, in love with one another.

Come back, father, little son, what I offer

Is just, is just human. Oh, Wednesday falls

Again. I am back, O, I am back where I began.

I can't stand it. Father, son, how many times,

Between coming and going, must I call and call?

THURSDAY

Thursday, 1924, Thor let fling his hammer:

The Hammonds, Mott and Esther, gave regular birth

To my baby sister. They had agreed to name her,

From some magazine of starlets, Jerry Lou. Grandma

Prepared a dinner -- roast beef with gravy. The platter

Clattered to the new-scrubbed floor: the baby fell

From the slimy hands of the doctor against a door.

Jerry Lou died two days after. Esther, mother,

Lay abed, time on her hands, each hour seemed an hour:

Eternity strolled around her room. The nurse,

An angel, held her hand, theologized, and read,

From Scripture, the Apocalypse. Both Jerry Lou and mother,

Time told before the twinkling, had far, O so far to go.

FRIDAY

She is the wife of the king of the gods, fish-eyed

Kateřina, she who rides the clouds of storm

And rains down her loving and giving. Née Frigga,

This mother of ten, purchases the food of gods

And strews the palaces with her cold disdain

Of illusion and imagination. She is the real

Daughter of Earth: in her hot blood, dreams

Melt and the beauty of what we see gleams

And what we touch burns like ice. Remember,

On Fridays, this female, the ferment she dispels

How, by the touch of her hand on your brow, sorrow

Dispels, calm descends, and, after her loving,

Sleep, like death, aimless and blank, drops down and down.

SATURDAY

I could always run rings around him, Davenport

Johnston Brown, my lead-in-the-pants step-father.

He worked hard for a living, hustling soft-drinks.

Every payday, once a week, on Saturdays, he

Would breeze into town from the territory

Where he tacked up window displays and drank

Coca-Cola. Home he would sit dull and drink

Coca-Cola, while mother cooked the only meals worth

Eating all that week. He ate her confections

In silence, while I gabbled on to mother

And asked her how he felt. She always told me

"Tired." Those days I played by myself. Once

He took me to a football game an autumn afternoon.

The crowd, the tackles, the popcorn, the chill air

Drove me manic. He calmed me with a kick.

Now, he looks like Father Time and it is too easy

To use the thunderbolt of my pen to dethrone him.

What can I say? Tote up his mistakes and mine?

Little father, you were not there enough and I

Grew up alone. Look at me. I disgorge a stone.

SUNDAY

My first born, fairest child is 93 million miles away,

Anna The Good, who wants, first, to go to church,

Who wants, next, to rest like the Lord of Creation,

DingDong, in the mess of her beautiful eyes.

Her father, McMullen The Wise, scares her, his beard

Looks like the torn tangle of her mind. At table

She will not eat nor drink unless the wine

Is poured, the bread broken. How to resurrect

Her childishness, lead her back to the backyard

Where, one Sunday, on the 4th of July, five years old,

She danced, a sunsparkle, fire-sparklers dripping from her hands.

Tense she is now and waiting,

Seven years old of debate, will-she, nill-she.

She wants incest, I guess, with her father

And he, a master of transformation, speaks

An oracle: "Years from now, when you marry,

Think not of me, grave-gone or weary, but clasp

In your arms some beauty who looks like me,

Who will say a poem for your daughter, a poem

That is fair and wise and good and gay."