You begin this way:

this is your hand,

this is your eye,

that is a fish, blue and flat

on the paper, almost

the shape of an eye.

This is your mouth, this is an O

or a moon, whichever

you like. This is yellow.



Outside the window

is the rain, green

because it is summer, and beyond that

the trees and then the world,

which is round and has only

the colors of these nine crayons.



This is the world, which is fuller

and more difficult to learn than I have said.

You are right to smudge it that way

with the red and then

the orange: the world burns.



Once you have learned these words

you will learn that there are more

words than you can ever learn.

The word hand floats above your hand

like a small cloud over a lake.

The word hand anchors

your hand to this table,

your hand is a warm stone

I hold between two words.



This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,

which is round but not flat and has more colors

than we can see.



It begins, it has an end,

this is what you will

come back to, this is your hand.





Reprinted by permission of Margaret Atwood. Copyright © 1978 by Margaret Atwood. Published in the United States in Selected Poems II: 1976-1986 by Houghton Mifflin Co.; in Canada in Selected Poems 1966-1984 by Oxford University Press; and in the United Kingdom in Eating Fire: Selected Poetry 1965-1995 by Virago Press.

I would like to watch you sleeping,

which may not happen.

I would like to watch you,

sleeping. I would like to sleep

with you, to enter

your sleep as its smooth dark wave

slides over my head



and walk with you through that lucent

wavering forest of bluegreen leaves

with its watery sun & three moons

towards the cave where you must descend,

towards your worst fear



I would like to give you the silver

branch, the small white flower, the one

word that will protect you

from the grief at the center

of your dream, from the grief

at the center. I would like to follow

you up the long stairway

again & become

the boat that would row you back

carefully, a flame

in two cupped hands

to where your body lies

beside me, and you enter

it as easily as breathing in



I would like to be the air

that inhabits you for a moment

only. I would like to be that unnoticed

& that necessary.





From Selected Poems II: 1976-1986 by Margaret Atwood. Copyright © 1987 by Margaret Atwood. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved.

It was taken some time ago.

At first it seems to be

a smeared

print: blurred lines and grey flecks

blended with the paper;



then, as you scan

it, you see in the left-hand corner

a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree

(balsam or spruce) emerging

and, to the right, halfway up

what ought to be a gentle

slope, a small frame house.



In the background there is a lake,

and beyond that, some low hills.



(The photograph was taken

the day after I drowned.



I am in the lake, in the center

of the picture, just under the surface.



It is difficult to say where

precisely, or to say

how large or small I am:

the effect of water

on light is a distortion



but if you look long enough,

eventually

you will be able to see me.)





From The Circle Game by Margaret Atwood. Copyright © 1998 by Margaret Atwood. Reproduced by permission of House of Anansi Press. All rights reserved.

In the burned house I am eating breakfast.

You understand: there is no house, there is no breakfast,

yet here I am.



The spoon which was melted scrapes against

the bowl which was melted also.

No one else is around.



Where have they gone to, brother and sister,

mother and father? Off along the shore,

perhaps. Their clothes are still on the hangers,



their dishes piled beside the sink,

which is beside the woodstove

with its grate and sooty kettle,



every detail clear,

tin cup and rippled mirror.

The day is bright and songless,



the lake is blue, the forest watchful.

In the east a bank of cloud

rises up silently like dark bread.



I can see the swirls in the oilcloth,

I can see the flaws in the glass,

those flares where the sun hits them.



I can't see my own arms and legs

or know if this is a trap or blessing,

finding myself back here, where everything



in this house has long been over,

kettle and mirror, spoon and bowl,

including my own body,



including the body I had then,

including the body I have now

as I sit at this morning table, alone and happy,



bare child's feet on the scorched floorboards

(I can almost see)

in my burning clothes, the thin green shorts



and grubby yellow T-shirt

holding my cindery, non-existent,

radiant flesh. Incandescent.




From Morning in the Burned House by Margaret Atwood. Copyright © 1995 by Margaret Atwood. Published in the United States by Houghton Mifflin Co., published in Canada by McClelland and Stewart, Inc. All rights reserved.