disappear

I've missed the last couple of days because of migraines (not uncommon, although I would be grateful if this super shitty migraine cycle I've been in for the last few weeks would break), and usually when something like this happens, I like to post long poems or multiple poems on a theme to make up for the missed days. I did not actually have a plan for this, but then my terrible friend Clare sent me a poem that was published today as part of the New York Public Library's Pocket Poems, and I thought, "I know what we need: a suite of devastating Orpheus and Eurydice poems!" Thanks, Clare. Since I collect Orpheus and Eurydice poems, this was less challenging than one might imagine. Here are three.

He lies on the grass. One hippogriff
of cloud becomes another: expanding,
contracting. It’s all unreal, the same
sky and river, the scent of living
things. The last of the ice floes passes
on the water, shears in two
pieces against the bridge. He studies
his hands, bitten fingernails. Every
time he turns he feels the stamping hooves,

the great herd. A man can get used
to anything, grow accustomed to
a change of seasons, each snap
of the moon. Even when he’s stretched
out on this slope he hears a steady
thrumming. It’s a long way off,
but he lies still, pretending. Once
he put candles in each window
of her body: a thousand wavering
lights. Back then he knew about fire.

—Anne Simpson (b. 1956), "Orpheus Afterwards," originally published in TLS, 2004.

Where would I be without my sorrow,
sorrow of my beloved's making,
without some sign of him, this song
of all gifts the most lasting?

How would you like to die
while Orpheus was singing?
A long death; all the way to Dis
I heard him.

Torment of earth
Torment of mortal passion—

I think sometimes
too much is asked of us;
I think sometimes
our consolations are the costliest thing.

All the way to Dis
I heard my husband singing
much as you now hear me.

Perhaps it was better that way,
my love fresh in my head
even at the moment of death.

Not the first response—
that was terror—
but the last.

—Louise Glück, "Relic," from Vita Nova, 1999.

she calls to ask if my dead father
has called me on the phone / no, I say

while a tiny flicker of electricity fireflies
up my spine / did he call you?

yes, she says, and then she looked for him -
under the covers, behind the mirror -

she looked and looked, and he wasn't there
he disappear, she says / (he disappear)

—Lee Ann Roripaugh, "my Japanese mother as Orpheus, with dementia," originally published in the NYPL's Pocket Poems, April 22 2020.