Home > Poetry Magazine > Ondine

Poetry Magazine

POEM
RELATED CONTENT Discover this poem's context and related poetry.

Ondine

By Mary Barnard 1909–2001 Mary Barnard

At supper time an ondine’s narrow feet

made dark tracks on the hearth.

Like the heart of a yellow fruit was the fire’s heat,

but they rubbed together quite blue with the cold.

The sandy hem of her skirt dripped on the floor.

She sat there with a silvered cedar knot

for a low stool; and I sat opposite,

my lips and eyelids hot

in the heat of the fire. Piling on dry bark,

seeing that no steam went up from her dark dress,

I felt uneasiness

as though firm sand had shifted under my feet

in the wash of a wave.

I brought her soup from the stove and she would not eat,

but sat there crying her cold tears,

her blue lips quivering with cold and grief.

She blamed me for a thief,

saying that I had burned a piece of wood

the tide washed up. And I said, No,

the tide had washed it out again; and even so,

a piece of sodden wood was not so rare

as polished agate stones or ambergris.

She stood and wrung her hair

so that the water made a sudden splash

on the round rug by the door. I saw her go

across the little footbridge to the beach.

After, I threw the knot on the hot coals.

It fell apart and burned with a white flash,

a crackling roar in the chimney and dark smoke.

I beat it out with a poker

in the soft ash.

Now I am frightened on the shore at night,

and all the phosphorescent swells that rise

come towards me with the threat of her dark eyes

with a cold firelight in them;

and crooked driftwood writhes

in dry sand when I pass.

Should she return and bring her sisters with her,

the withdrawing tide

would leave a long pool in my bed.

There would be nothing more of me this side

the melting foamline of the latest wave.

Mary Barnard, “Ondine” from Collected Poems (Portland: Breitenbush, 1979). Used by permission of the Estate of Mary Barnard.

Source: Poetry (April 1935).

Biography

Mary Barnard was born in Vancouver, Washington and attended Reed College where she received her bachelor’s degree in 1932. Her works include A Few Poems (1952), The Mythmakers (1966), Three Fables (1975) and Nantucket Genesis: The Tale of My Tribe (1988). She was awarded Poetry Magazine’s Levinson Award in 1935, the Elliston award for her book Collected Poems (1979), the Western States Book Award in 1986 for her book Time and . . .

Continue reading this biography