Barrels

By Barbara Guest 1920–2006 Barbara Guest

Y otras pasan; y viéndome tan triste,
toman un poquito de ti
en la abrupta arruga de mi hondo dolor.
Cesar Vellejo

I won’t let anybody

take a drink

out of this barrel of tears

I’ve collected from you.

Least of all another woman.

I see her coming along.

I know the type.

I can tell you what she’ll

be wearing.

I know the type

I won’t like it.

She’ll look at that barrel

she’s had a few in her day.

Not that she’s ever filled one.

She’ll remark casually,

“Sweet water,

good to wash my hair.”

And who doesn’t know

tears are purer

than rain water

and softer on the hair.

Just as she steps toward it

and makes for the cup,

I’ll see phantom you

and what you were

brought up by the sea.

And scraps of paper

from this ditch of my brain

will float on the water

and choke her.

Source: The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest (Wesleyan University Press, 2008)

Biography

Barbara Guest rose to prominence in the late 1950s as a member of an informal group of writers known as the New York school of poets whose membership included Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, and James Schuyler. Their innovative approach to poetry was influenced by modern art, especially surrealism and abstract expressionism. Guest drew on her own background in art (she worked for Art News magazine in the 1950s) to create poetry . . .

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