Margaret Atwood:

Poems

Biography of Margaret Atwood

a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of Asturias award for Literature, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, winning once, and has been a finalist for the Governor General's Award seven times, winning twice. 

While she is best known for her work as a novelist, she is also a poet, having published 15 books of poetry to date. Many of her poems have been inspired by myths and fairy tales, which have been interests of hers from an early age. Atwood has published short stories in Tamarack Review, Alphabet, Harper's, CBC Anthology, Ms., Saturday Night, and many other magazines. She has also published four collections of stories and three collections of unclassifiable short prose works.

A Sad ChildYou're sad because you're sad.It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.Go see a shrink or take a pill,or hug your sadness like an eyeless dollyou need to sleep.

Well, all children are sadbut some get over it.Count your blessings. Better than that,buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet.Take up dancing to forget.

Forget what?Your sadness, your shadow,whatever it was that was done to youthe day of the lawn partywhen you came inside flushed with the sun,your mouth sulky with sugar,in your new dress with the ribbonand the ice-cream smear,and said to yourself in the bathroom,I am not the favorite child.

My darling, when it comesright down to itand the light fails and the fog rolls inand you're trapped in your overturned bodyunder a blanket or burning car,

and the red flame is seeping out of youand igniting the tarmac beside you heador else the floor, or else the pillow,none of us is;or else we all are. 

Margaret Atwood

More and MoreMore and more frequently the edgesof me dissolve and I becomea wish to assimilate the world, includingyou, if possible through the skinlike a cool plant's tricks with oxygenand live by a harmless green burning.

I would not consumeyou or everfinish, you would still be theresurrounding me, completeas the air.

Unfortunately I don't have leaves.Instead I have eyesand teeth and other non-greenthings which rule out osmosis.

So be careful, I mean it,I give you fair warning:

This kind of hunger drawseverything into its ownspace; nor can wetalk it all over, have a calmrational discussion.

There is no reason for this, onlya starved dog's logic about bones. 

Margaret Atwood

HabitationMarriage is not a house or even a tent 

it is before that, and colder: 

The edge of the forest, the edge of the desert the unpainted stairsat the back where we squat outside, eating popcorn 

where painfully and with wonder at having survived even this far 

we are learning to make fire 

Margaret Atwood

A VisitGone are the dayswhen you could walk on water.When you could walk.

The days are gone.Only one day remains,the one you're in.

The memory is no friend.It can only tell youwhat you no longer have:

a left hand you can use,two feet that walk.All the brain's gadgets.

Hello, hello.The one hand that still worksgrips, won't let go.

That is not a train.There is no cricket.Let's not panic.

Let's talk about axes,which kinds are good,the many names of wood.

This is how to builda house, a boat, a tent.No use; the toolbox

refuses to reveal its verbs;the rasp, the plane, the awl,revert to sullen metal.

Do you recognize anything? I said.Anything familiar?Yes, you said. The bed.

Better to watch the streamthat flows across the floorand is made of sunlight,

the forest made of shadows;better to watch the fireplacewhich is now a beach. 

Margaret Atwood

Morning in the Burned HouseIn 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 woodstovewith 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 legsor 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 nowas 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-shirtholding my cindery, non-existent,radiant flesh. Incandescent. 

Margaret Atwood

Helen of Troy Does Countertop DancingThe world is full of womenwho'd tell me I should be ashamed of myselfif they had the chance. Quit dancing.Get some self-respectand a day job.Right. And minimum wage,and varicose veins, just standingin one place for eight hoursbehind a glass counterbundled up to the neck, instead of naked as a meat sandwich.Selling gloves, or something.Instead of what I do sell.You have to have talent to peddle a thing so nebulousand without material form.Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any wayyou cut it, but I've a choiceof how, and I'll take the money.

I do give value.Like preachers, I sell vision,like perfume ads, desireor its facsimile. Like jokesor war, it's all in the timing.I sell men back their worse suspicions:that everything's for sale,and piecemeal. They gaze at me and seea chain-saw murder just before it happens,when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nippleare still connected.Such hatred leaps in them,my beery worshippers! That, or a blearyhopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads and upturned eyes, imploringbut ready to snap at my ankles,I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge to step on ants. I keep the beat,and dance for them becausethey can't. The music smells like foxes,crisp as heated metalsearing the nostrilsor humid as August, hazy and languorousas a looted city the day after,when all the rape's been donealready, and the killing,and the survivors wander around

looking for garbageto eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion.Speaking of which, it's the smilingtires me out the most. This, and the pretencethat I can't hear them.And I can't, because I'm after alla foreigner to them.The speech here is all warty gutturals,obvious as a slab of ham,but I come from the province of the godswhere meanings are lilting and oblique.I don't let on to everyone,but lean close, and I'll whisper:My mother was raped by a holy swan.You believe that? You can take me out to dinner. That's what we tell all the husbands.There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.

Not that anyone herebut you would understand.The rest of them would like to watch meand feel nothing. Reduce me to componentsas in a clock factory or abattoir.Crush out the mystery.Wall me up alivein my own body. They'd like to see through me, but nothing is more opaquethan absolute transparency.Look--my feet don't hit the marble!Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising,I hover six inches in the airin my blazing swan-egg of light.You think I'm not a goddess?Try me.This is a torch song.Touch me and you'll burn. 

Margaret Atwood

Flying Inside Your Own BodyYour lungs fill & spread themselves,wings of pink blood, and your bonesempty themselves and become hollow.When you breathe in you’ll lift like a balloonand your heart is light too & huge,beating with pure joy, pure helium.The sun’s white winds blow through you,there’s nothing above you,you see the earth now as an oval jewel,radiant & seablue with love.It’s only in dreams you can do this.Waking, your heart is a shaken fist,a fine dust clogs the air you breathe in;the sun’s a hot copper weight pressing straightdown on the think pink rind of your skull.It’s always the moment just before gunshot.You try & try to rise but you cannot. 

Margaret Atwood

Backdropp Addresses CowboyStarspangled cowboy sauntering out of the almost-silly West, on your face a porcelain grin, tugging a papier-mache cactus on wheels behind you with a string, 

you are innocent as a bathtubfull of bullets.

Your righteous eyes, your laconic trigger-fingerspeople the streets with villains: as you move, the air in front of you blossoms with targets

and you leave behind you a heroic trail of desolation: beer bottles slaughtered by the side of the road, bird-skulls bleaching in the sunset.

I ought to be watchingfrom behind a cliff or a cardboard storefront when the shooting starts, hands clasped in admiration, 

but I am elsewhere.Then what about me

what about the I confronting you on that border you are always trying to cross? 

I am the horizonyou ride towards, the thing you can never lasso

I am also what surrounds you: my brain 

scattered with your tincans, bones, empty shells, the litter of your invasions.

I am the space you desecrateas you pass through. 

Margaret Atwood

maddy_1975@yahoo.co.in

Is/NotLove is not a professiongenteel or otherwise

sex is not dentistrythe slick filling of aches and cavities

you are not my doctoryou are not my cure,

nobody has thatpower, you are merely a fellow/traveller

Give up this medical concern,buttoned, attentive,

permit yourself angerand permit me mine

which needs neitheryour approval nor your suprise

which does not need to be made legalwhich is not against a disease

but agaist you,which does not need to be understood

or washed or cauterized,which needs instead

to be said and said.Permit me the present tense. 

Margaret Atwood

PostcardsI'm thinking about you. What else can I say?The palm trees on the reverseare a delusion; so is the pink sand.What we have are the usualfractured coke bottles and the smellof backed-up drains, too sweet,like a mango on the vergeof rot, which we have also.The air clear sweat, mosquitoes& their tracks; birds & elusive.

Time comes in waves here, a sickness, oneday after the other rolling on;I move up, it's calledawake, then down into the uneasynights but neverforward. The roosters crowfor hours before dawn, and a proddedchild howls & howlson the pocked road to school.In the hold with the baggagethere are two prisoners,their heads shaved by bayonets, & ten cratesof queasy chicks. Each springthere's race of cripples, from the storeto the church. This is the sort of junkI carry with me; and a clippingabout democracy from the local paper.

Outside the windowthey're building the damn hotel,nail by nail, someone'scrumbling dream. A universe that includes youcan't be all bad, butdoes it? At this distanceyou're a mirage, a glossy imagefixed in the postureof the last time I saw you.Turn you over, there's the placefor the address. Wish you werehere. Love comesin waves like the ocean, a sickness which goes on& on, a hollow cavein the head, filling & pounding, a kicked ear. 

Margaret Atwood

BoredAll those times I was boredout of my mind. Holding the logwhile he sawed it. Holdingthe string while he measured, boards,distances between things, or poundedstakes into the ground for rows and rowsof lettuces and beets, which I then (bored)weeded. Or sat in the backof the car, or sat still in boats,sat, sat, while at the prow, stern, wheelhe drove, steered, paddled. Itwasn't even boredom, it was looking,looking hard and up close at the smalldetails. Myopia. The worn gunwales,the intricate twill of the seatcover. The acid crumbs of loam, the granularpink rock, its igneous veins, the sea-fansof dry moss, the blackish and then the grayingbristles on the back of his neck.Sometimes he would whistle, sometimesI would. The boring rhythm of doingthings over and over, carryingthe wood, dryingthe dishes. Such minutiae. It's whatthe animals spend most of their time at,ferrying the sand, grain by grain, from their tunnels,shuffling the leaves in their burrows. He pointedsuch things out, and I would lookat the whorled texture of his square finger, earth underthe nail. Why do I remember it as sunnierall the time then, although it more oftenrained, and more birdsong?I could hardly wait to getthe hell out of there toanywhere else. Perhaps thoughboredom is happier. It is for dogs orgroundhogs. Now I wouldn't be bored.Now I would know too much.Now I would know. 

Margaret Atwood

ProvisionsWhat should we have takenwith us? We never could decideon that; or what to wear,or at what time ofyear we should make the journey

So here we are in thinraincoats and rubber boots

On the disastrous ice, the wind rising

Nothing in our pockets

But a pencil stub, two orangesFour Toronto streetcar tickets

and an elastic band holding a bundleof small white filing cardsprinted with important facts. 

Margaret Atwood

In the Secular NightIn the secular night you wander aroundalone in your house. It's two-thirty.Everyone has deserted you,or this is your story;you remember it from being sixteen,when the others were out somewhere, having a good time,or so you suspected,and you had to baby-sit.You took a large scoop of vanilla ice-creamand filled up the glass with grapejuiceand ginger ale, and put on Glenn Millerwith his big-band sound,and lit a cigarette and blew the smoke up the chimney,and cried for a while because you were not dancing,and then danced, by yourself, your mouth circled with purple.

Now, forty years later, things have changed,and it's baby lima beans.It's necessary to reserve a secret vice.This is what comes from forgetting to eatat the stated mealtimes. You simmer them carefully,drain, add cream and pepper,and amble up and down the stairs,scooping them up with your fingers right out of the bowl,talking to yourself out loud.You'd be surprised if you got an answer,but that part will come later.

There is so much silence between the words,you say. You say, The sensed absenceof God and the sensed presenceamount to much the same thing,only in reverse.You say, I have too much white clothing.You start to hum.Several hundred years agothis could have been mysticismor heresy. It isn't now.Outside there are sirens.Someone's been run over.The century grinds on. 

Margaret Atwood

Sekhmet, the Lion-headed Goddess of WarHe was the sort of manwho wouldn't hurt a fly.Many flies are now alivewhile he is not.He was not my patron.He preferred full granaries, I battle.My roar meant slaughter.Yet here we are togetherin the same museum.That's not what I see, though, the fitfulcrowds of staring childrenlearning the lesson of multi-cultural obliteration, sic transitand so on.

I see the temple where I was bornor built, where I held power.I see the desert beyond,where the hot conical tombs, that lookfrom a distance, frankly, like dunces' hats,hide my jokes: the dried-out fleshand bones, the wooden boatsin which the dead sail endlesslyin no direction.

What did you expect from godswith animal heads?Though come to think of itthe ones made later, who were fully humanwere not such good news either.Favour me and give me riches,destroy my enemies.That seems to be the gist.Oh yes: And save me from death.In return we're given bloodand bread, flowers and prayer,and lip service.

Maybe there's something in all of thisI missed. But if it's selflesslove you're looking for,you've got the wrong goddess.

I just sit where I'm put, composedof stone and wishful thinking:that the deity who kills for pleasurewill also heal,that in the midst of your nightmare,

the final one, a kind lionwill come with bandages in her mouthand the soft body of a woman,and lick you clean of fever,and pick your soul up gently by the nape of the neckand caress you into darkness and paradise. 

Margaret Atwood

Siren SongThis is the one song everyonewould like to learn: the songthat is irresistible:

the song that forces mento leap overboard in squadronseven though they see beached skulls

the song nobody knowsbecause anyone who had heard itis dead, and the others can’t remember.Shall I tell you the secretand if I do, will you get meout of this bird suit?I don’t enjoy it heresquatting on this islandlooking picturesque and mythicalwith these two feathery maniacs,I don’t enjoy singingthis trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,to you, only to you.Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!Only you, only you can,you are unique

at last. Alasit is a boring songbut it works every time. 

Margaret Atwood

SpellingMy daughter plays on the floorwith plastic letters,red, blue & hard yellow,learning how to spell,spelling,how to make spells.

I wonder how many womendenied themselves daughters,closed themselves in rooms,drew the curtainsso they could mainline words.

A child is not a poem,a poem is not a child.there is no either/or.However.

I return to the storyof the woman caught in the war& in labour, her thighs tiedtogether by the enemyso she could not give birth.

Ancestress: the burning witch,her mouth covered by leatherto strangle words.

A word after a wordafter a word is power.

At the point where language falls awayfrom the hot bones, at the pointwhere the rock breaks open and darknessflows out of it like blood, atthe melting point of granitewhen the bones knowthey are hollow & the wordsplits & doubles & speaksthe truth & the bodyitself becomes a mouth.

This is a metaphor.

How do you learn to spell?Blood, sky & the sun,your own name first,

your first naming, your first name,your first word. 

Margaret Atwood

The City PlannersCruising these residential Sundaystreets in dry August sunlight:what offends us isthe sanities:the houses in pedantic rows, the plantedsanitary trees, assertlevelness of surface like a rebuketo the dent in our car door.No shouting here, orshatter of glass; nothing more abruptthan the rational whine of a power mowercutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass.

But though the driveways neatlysidestep hysteriaby being even, the roofs all displaythe same slant of avoidance to the hot sky,certain things:the smell of spilled oil a faintsickness lingering in the garages,a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise,a plastic hose poised in a viciouscoil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows

give momentary access tothe landscape behind or underthe future cracks in the plaster

when the houses, capsized, will slideobliquely into the clay seas, gradual as glaciersthat right now nobody notices.

That is where the City Plannerswith the insane faces of political conspiratorsare scattered over unsurveyedterritories, concealed from each other,each in his own private blizzard;

guessing directions, they sketchtransitory lines rigid as wooden borderson a wall in the white vanishing air

tracing the panic of suburborder in a bland madness of snows 

Margaret Atwood

The LandladyThis is the lair of the landlady

She isa raw voiceloose in the rooms beneath me.

the continuous henyardsquabble going on belowthought in this house likethe bicker of blood through the head.

She is everywhere, intrusive as the smellsthat bulge in under my doorsill;she presides over mymeagre eating, generatesthe light for eyestrain.

From her I rent my time:she slamsmy days like doors.Nothing is mine.

and when I dream imagesof daring escapes through the snowI find myself walkingalways over a vast facewhich is the land-lady's, and wake up shouting.

She is a bulk, a knotswollen in a space. Though I have triedto find some way aroundher, my sensesare cluttered by perceptionand can't see through her.

She stands there, a raucous factblocking my way:immutable, a slabof what is real.

solid as bacon. 

Margaret Atwood

The MomentThe moment when, after many yearsof hard work and a long voyageyou stand in the centre of your room,house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,knowing at last how you got there,and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloosetheir soft arms from around you,the birds take back their language,the cliffs fissure and collapse,the air moves back from you like a waveand you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.You were a visitor, time after timeclimbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.We never belonged to you.You never found us.It was always the other way round. 

Margaret Atwood

The RestThe rest of us watch from beyond the fenceas the woman moves with her jagged strideinto her pain as if into a slow race.We see her body in motionbut hear no sounds, or we hearsounds but no language; or we knowit is not a language we knowyet. We can see her clearlybut for her it is running in black smoke.The cluster of cells in her swellinglike porridge boiling, and bursting,like grapes, we think. Or we think ofexplosions in mud; but we know nothing.All around us the treesand the grasses light up with forgiveness,so green and at this timeof the year healthy.We would like to call somethingout to her. Some form of cheering.There is pain but no arrival at anything. 

Margaret Atwood

The Shadow VoiceMy shadow said to me: what is the matter

Isn't the moon warmenough for youwhy do you needthe blanket of another body

Whose kiss is moss

Around the picnic tablesThe bright pink hands held sandwichescrumbled by distance. Flies crawlover the sweet instant

You know what is in these blankets

The trees outside are bending withchildren shooting guns. Leavethem alone. They are playinggames of their own.

I give water, I give clean crusts

Aren't there enough wordsflowing in your veinsto keep you going. 

Margaret Atwood

This is a Photograph of MeIt was taken some time agoAt first it seems to bea smearedprint: blurred lines and grey flecksblended with the paper;

then, as you scanit, you can see something in the left-hand cornera thing that is like a branch: part of a tree(balsam or spruce) emergingand, to the right, halfway upwhat ought to be a gentleslope, a small frame house.

In the background there is a lake,and beyond that, some low hills.

(The photograph was takenthe day after I drowned.

I am in the lake, in the centerof the picture, just under the surface.

It is difficult to say whereprecisely, or to sayhow large or how small I am:the effect of wateron light is a distortion.

but if you look long enougheventuallyyou will see me.) 

Margaret Atwood

Variation On The Word SleepI would like to watch you sleeping,which may not happen.I would like to watch you,sleeping. I would like to sleepwith you, to enteryour sleep as its smooth dark waveslides over my head

and walk with you through that lucentwavering forest of bluegreen leaveswith its watery sun & three moonstowards the cave where you must descend,towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silverbranch, the small white flower, the oneword that will protect youfrom the grief at the centerof your dream, from the griefat the center I would like to followyou up the long stairwayagain & becomethe boat that would row you backcarefully, a flamein two cupped handsto where your body liesbeside me, and as you enterit as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the airthat inhabits you for a momentonly. I would like to be that unnoticed& that necessary. 

Margaret Atwood

Variations on the Word LoveThis is a word we use to plugholes with. It's the right size for those warmblanks in speech, for those red heart-shaped vacancies on the page that look nothinglike real hearts. Add laceand you can sellit. We insert it also in the one emptyspace on the printed formthat comes with no instructions. There are wholemagazines with not much in thembut the word love, you canrub it all over your body and youcan cook with it too. How do we knowit isn't what goes on at the cooldebaucheries of slugs under damppieces of cardboard? As for the weed-seedlings nosing their tough snouts upamong the lettuces, they shout it.Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raisingtheir glittering knives in salute.

Then there's the twoof us. This wordis far too short for us, it has onlyfour letters, too sparseto fill those deep barevacuums between the starsthat press on us with their deafness.It's not love we don't wishto fall into, but that fear.this word is not enough but it willhave to do. It's a singlevowel in this metallicsilence, a mouth that saysO again and again in wonderand pain, a breath, a fingergrip on a cliffside. You canhold on or let go. 

Margaret Atwood

You Fit Into MeYou fit into melike a hook into an eye

a fish hookan open eye 

Margaret Atwood