A Poem For Thursday

“Martha Yarnoz Bidart Hall” by Frank Bidart:

Though she whom you had so let
in, the desire for survival will not

allow you ever to admit
another so deeply in again

Though she, in, went crazy
vengeful-crazy

so that, as in Dante, there she ate your heart

Though her house that she despised but
spent her life constructing

still cannot, thirty-nine years after
her death, by your ratiocination or rage

be uncon-
structed

you think, We had an encounter on the earth

each of us
hungry beyond belief

As long as you are alive
she is alive

You are the leaping
dog

capricious on the grass, lunging
at something only it can see.