Really, It's Like We're Made Out of Velcro

Misery and Splendor

By Robert Hass 

Summoned by conscious recollection, she
would be smiling, they might be in a kitchen talking,
before or after dinner. But they are in this other room,
the window has many small panes, and they are on a couch
embracing. He holds her as tightly
as he can, she buries herself in his body.
Morning, maybe it is evening, light
is flowing through the room. Outside,
the day is slowly succeeded by night,
succeeded by day. The process wobbles wildly
and accelerates: weeks, months, years. The light in the room
does not change, so it is plain what is happening.
They are trying to become one creature,
and something will not have it. They are tender
with each other, afraid
their brief, sharp cries will reconcile them to the moment
when they fall away again. So they rub against each other,
their mouths dry, then wet, then dry.
They feel themselves at the center of a powerful
and baffled will. They feel
they are an almost animal,
washed up on the shore of a world—
or huddled against the gate of a garden—
to which they can’t admit they can never be admitted.

The Yellow Bicycle

by Robert Hass

The woman I love is greedy, 
but she refuses greed. 
She walks so straightly. 
When I ask her what she wants, 
she says, “A yellow bicycle.”

. 

Sun, sunflower, 
coltsfoot on the roadside, 
a goldfinch, the sign 
that says Yield, her hair, 
cat’s eyes, his hunger 
and a yellow bicycle. 

. 

Once, when they had made love in the middle of the night and   
it was very sweet, they decided they were hungry, so they got up, 
got dressed, and drove downtown to an all-night donut shop. 
Chicano kids lounged outside, a few drunks, and one black man 
selling dope. Just at the entrance there was an old woman in a 
thin floral print dress. She was barefoot. Her face was covered 
with sores and dry peeling skin. The sores looked like raisins and 
her skin was the dry yellow of a parchment lampshade ravaged by 
light and tossed away. They thought she must have been hungry 
and, coming out again with a white paper bag full of hot rolls, 
they stopped to offer her one. She looked at them out of her small 
eyes, bewildered, and shook her head for a little while, and said, 
very kindly, “No.” 

. 

Her song to the yellow bicycle: 
The boats on the bay 
have nothing on you,   
my swan, my sleek one!