I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee

By Howard Nemerov 1920–1991 Howard Nemerov

I tell you that I see her still

At the dark entrance of the hall.

One gas lamp burning near her shoulder

Shone also from her other side

Where hung the long inaccurate glass

Whose pictures were as troubled water.

An immense shadow had its hand

Between us on the floor, and seemed

To hump the knuckles nervously,

A giant crab readying to walk,

Or a blanket moving in its sleep.

You will remember, with a smile

Instructed by movies to reminisce,

How strict her corsets must have been,

How the huge arrangements of her hair

Would certainly betray the least

Impassionate displacement there.

It was no rig for dallying,

And maybe only marriage could

Derange that queenly scaffolding—

As when a great ship, coming home,

Coasts in the harbor, dropping sail

And loosing all the tackle that had laced

Her in the long lanes ....

I know

We need not draw this figure out.

But all that whalebone came from whales.

And all the whales lived in the sea,

In calm beneath the troubled glass,

Until the needle drew their blood.

I see her standing in the hall,

Where the mirror’s lashed to blood and foam,

And the black flukes of agony

Beat at the air till the light blows out.

Howard Nemerov, “I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee” from The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977). Copyright © 1977 by Howard Nemerov. Reprinted with the permission of Margaret Nemerov.

Source: The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov (The University of Chicago Press, 1977)

Biography

Howard Nemerov was a highly acclaimed poet often cited for the range of his capabilities and subject matter, "from the profound to the poignant to the comic," James Billington remarked in his frequently quoted announcement of Nemerov's appointment to the post of United States poet laureate. A distinguished professor at Washington University in St. Louis from 1969 to 1990, Nemerov wrote poetry and fiction that managed to engage . . .

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