I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the Yates family in Texas, or at least what’s left of it, and for some reason these poems by Lisel Mueller struck a chord with me regarding that grim subject.

Happy And Unhappy Families II

According to the directory
even Electra was once a child
in a happy family. Hard to imagine
Agamemnon’s daughters
batting balloons across the lawn,
while Orestes shouts
joyfully from his rocking horse
and the soon-to-be-murdered parents
smile fondly over their summer drinks.

Only in the catastrophe,
the inescapable horror show,
do they exist for us,
while close to home, in the latest
double murder and suicide,
horror fails the imagination.
Nothing, a blank. We remember
the good times, study the family pictures.
The little girl had a birthday party
last week. They had balloons.
They played jump rope in the yard.
The mother always looked pretty.
He was always polite.

In the play, we know what must happen
long before it happens,
and we call it tragedy.
Here, at home, this winter,
we have no name for it.

Bedtime Story

The moon lies on the river
like a drop of oil.
The children come to the banks to be healed
of their wounds and bruises.
The fathers who gave them their wounds and bruises
come to be healed of their rage.
The mothers grow lovely; their faces soften,
the birds in their throats awake.
They all stand hand in hand
and the trees around them,
forever on the verge
of becoming one of them,
stop shuddering and speak their first word.

But that is not the beginning.
It is the end of the story,
and before we come to the end,
the mothers and fathers and children
must find their way to the river,
separately, with no one to guide them.
That is the long, pitiless part,
and it will scare you.

———————
These poems came from Lisel Mueller’s, Alive Together: New and Selected Poems.