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by Fred Chappell
Seated, they become one with their chairs;
And when they stand the ceiling is too low;
The histories that call them to converse
Are as obscure as Patagonian wars
And elegiac as this evening's afterglow.
Among them roams Elizabeth, age eight,
Priss-proud in her finery and bored
Bored bored. Grown-ups do nothing always but sit
And talk and what do they ever talk about?
—Not of Elizabeth a single word.
Even her daddy brushes her aside
And discomposes into self-important wrinkles
When he leans forward, nervous, dissatisfied,
Talking heatedly, wagging his head
At the freckled knuckles of half drunken uncles.
Are you Elizabeth if no one says?
Nor compliments your dress with its blue sash,
Remarks your brilliant patent leather shoes?
They let you wander and listen all you please
But pay you no more mind than cigar ash.
The kitchen aunts and great-aunts boil and bake,
Gossip of diets, hysterectomies,
Disasters, cures, deep woe and long heartache
As if they traded recipes for cake
Or retold the plots of soapy TV shows
The other older children will not engage,
The young are babies or insufferably dumb;
No one here is of a proper age
To understand Elizabeth at this stage
When all that's good is past or yet to come.
Out to the porch she goes where the starless night
Presses against the sagging rusty screens
Its breathing flank. The yellow ceiling light
Attracts a fairy moth whose zigzag flight
Throws shadow-scuttle on the window panes.
The inside of the house seems far away
With all its clutter, chatter, whiskey-breath
And coffee. Very well; better to stay
Alone. Solitary, she can play
Her favorite role: the true Elizabeth.
She cuts the light, begins to pirouette,
Measuring a tune that pours her mind
Full of itself, a lilting minuet
That spins her ever faster than her feet.
Elizabeth is dancing, dancing blind,
Inside the porch inside a night so black
that it must swallow house and family
Like some gross movie dragon run amok.
Only her dancing keeps this monster back,
Her song alone keeps apocalypse at bay.
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