Rosanna Warren
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Rosanna Warren was born in Connecticut in 1953. She was educated at Yale (BA 1976) and Johns Hopkins (MA 1980). She is the author of one chapbook of poems (SNOW DAY, Palaemon Press, 1981), and three collections of poems: EACH LEAF SHINES SEPARATE (Norton, 1984), STAINED GLASS (Norton, 1993), and DEPARTURE (Norton, 2003). She edited and contributed to THE ART OF TRANSLATION: VOICES FROM THE FIELD (Northeastern, 1989), and has edited three chapbooks of poetry by prisoners. With her husband, Stephen Scully, she translated Euripides¹ SUPPLIANT WOMEN for Oxford University Press (1992). She has won fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, ACLS, The Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Lila Wallace Readers¹ Digest Fund, among others. STAINED GLASS won the Lamont Poetry Award from the Academy of American Poets. She has won the Witter Bynner Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Lavan Younger Poets¹ Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and the Award of Merit in Poetry from The American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004. She was a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1999 2005. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2004-2005 she was president of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics. She is Emma MacLachlan Metcalf Professor of the Humanities at Boston University.
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Lake
You stood thigh-deep in water and green light glanced
off your hip hollows and stomach which is where the pilot light
flickers in ancient statues of Dionysus,
and for a moment as you strode deeper it seemed as if
this water might rinse away the heaviness
of your own seasons and of illnesses not your own: it was a caress
cool and faithless, it lapped against your waist,
it took you in its arms and you gave yourself, a little,
only a little, knowing how soon and how lightly that touch would be withdrawn,
how soon you would be standing again on the rootwebbed shore, drying, restored
to the weights and measures, pulses, aches and scars you know by heart,
the cranky shoulder, cramping heel tendons, bad knees, bad dreams
you would recognize in the dark, anywhere, as your own;
and you knew, too, how those you cannot heal would remain unhealed
though you reach for them, kiss them on the forehead, and they stare back out of the drift;
and you knew the mountains would continue their slow, degrading shuffle to the sea
until continental plates shifted in their sleep, and this whole lake was swallowed
in earth's gasp, ocean's yawn.
"Piazza Pilo."
The low stone and stucco wall opens
in gaps; you can pass
through, cross diagonally, or meander
within; you can sit on one of
eight slatted benches under elms and read the paper, you
can sit on the wall and chat or
listen to the radio if it's night and you're young, you can walk
your dog: the park accepts
all, its pebbles crunch under business shoes as under
sneakers ambling, the dog-walker's
loiter, trudge of an elderly woman laden
with plastic grocery bags, the full-tilt
charge of one boy chasing
another. If you're crippled
or retarded you can sit here and the elms
don't rush their friendliness, they are
just poking into frowsy leaf, it's April, they
seem happy to have you, so are the
old German shepherd and her terrier friend, so are
the grayish men with newspapers: you
can throne in your wheelchair and take the sun, or hunch
on the wall and mumble. The park
knows how to receive, how to
let go. Its puddles sink
(it rained last night) slowly out of
sight. If you're sick, aging, in love,
the park shows you how to follow the score,
to keep the beat. The dance is
larger. Nightingales pelt out songs
at dawn where last night's trash
spills from the corner basket. You could
let someone kiss you, slowly:
you could open your mouth to surprise, a
gift the gods
grant with other gifts: the staggering heart,
ashes on the tongue, long patience at slow
breakage. Prayer. The word
"unhealed." The word "farewell."
