Poem The pond

The Pond, by Louise Gluck, from "The House on the Marshland, 1975 Night covers the pond with its wing.

Under the ringed moon I can make out

your face swimming among minnows and the small

echoing stars. In the night air

the surface of the pond is metal.

Within, your eyes are open. They contain

a memory I recognize, as though

we had been children together. Our ponies

grazed on the hill, they were gray

with white markings. Now they graze

with the dead who wait

like children under their granite breastplates,

lucid and helpless:

The hills are far away. They rise up

blacker than childhood.

What do you think of, lying so quietly

by the water? When you look that way I want

to touch you, but do not, seeing

as in another life we were of the same blood.