The Nap
For so long it wasn’t possible—
although at the credit agency
I would disappear during breaks
to a little cot in the back room until
the timer went off—
but today
no obligations no voices
and the window is open
and I’m able to lie on the couch
and hear the soft rain
while the gorgeous pageant goes on
which does not need all of us for now
every flower pressed on the retina
yet while we’re here
to know we love our descendants if they come
or any future lives
although we will never meet them
and they won’t know our names or faces, not know
what they could mean to us
and how we will not be guiding them—
that would be intrusive—
and yet I suppose there’s no escaping us and what we did
even those of us napping during the pageant.
It is so good, this napping.
Oh small things of the world,
how can I praise you without a reprimand?
~
Translation
I had loved the poet
as if I’d known her,
and then came the bad translation.
I was the bad translator too,
knowing only a few words
in the original language,
and yet how I had loved the rendering by another
translator
in my own language
as if my language
could be my own
when it too escapes me
oh gluttonous English,
but with the bad translation
nothing flew through
into the language I knew best
nothing sank either.
The translation had not taken the poetry out
so much as sanded the lines
into the intelligible
instead of the vast.
And yet I know enough to be grateful:
two translations and
the original, a hinge.
~
The Case of Jewelry
Snow drop earrings,
the pearls with a scent of decay,
tarnish on the dark amulet
that blue bauble
with a gray vein
charged with static.
The cloud on this ring is an opera
of compressed lightning
or a boiled egg on a string.
This rhinestone tiara is darkened as old dentures,
this green drop of lava and rain—
if we could wear them all at once
clatter on the street,
if each were defiance
against time and an inheritance.
Each safe in their case,
despite three centuries of wars,
neither chipped nor worn.
~
The Endless Forest
There were beautiful trees
and I was losing them.
Such beauties,
the way they arch over us,
a mother’s arms—
I imagine that was what
they reminded us of
although we’d never
say such a thing.
On each side of us
these old trees
not like witnesses, for
they had their own lives
and only spoke to one another.
In autumn it’s horrible
how much I miss my mother.
Looking back
I see now
where the mistakes were
in the endless forest,
endless rain,
where it ends less
is endless for us,
or else the forest must be
mended
broken end to end.
Green and dark green and lush
and I see you under
branches and through light
and leaves and
walking the green of greenness
the hoard of words
in the woods
until we could not feel language.
We had felt too much,
but that of course is a feeling.
~
Lee Upton is a poet and novelist. Her poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and Southern Review, as well as three editions of Best American Poetry. A collection of her new and selected poems is forthcoming in 2027. www.leeupton.com