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Aunt Lil

I They brought her to the hospital On one of those April days That remind us we will never live enough. That the soft smell of leaves, flowering breeze, The silver light flashing from windows, Will always be too much for us.

She kicks the covers back, not caring If we see her enormous thighs, her birthmark Tufted with secret hairs only lovers had seen. When her lips won't form around her thought, She cries out girlishly, "I don't know, I don't know." Her large eyes roll and stare, as if looking For someone to pry her from her failing flesh.

II A beach: scalloped sand, soft rasping waves; My parents searching frantically to see If I had drowned, or if, like the fish In the tale, I could breathe their angry Guilt and make a life of it. With a small boy's genius, I imitated childhood, Taking you, my large-eyed beautiful aunt, to love passionately and simply.

Cruel and soaring, You battered those you loved, As if ecstasy and cruelty were the same. Yet at times you were happier than anyone; so drunk on yourself, you could hardly Walk down stairs for the stumbling heavens at your heels.

III I remember sitting with you on the subway, Thick-headed with fever. You opened your newspaper To a cloud boiling on a stalk of light, A single word, Hiroshima. Amid the screeching of subway metal, The headlines drooping on front pages, your voice, Your immense body, seemed to fill the subway car.

I hadn't heard yet of your manic flights, The electroshock, the family's Embarrassed hush at your desperate ways.

You were sick of too much: Hope fucking laughter. Yet to me you were beautiful, A brown moon of flesh. And the boy who lived as in a cold sleep Came strangely forth into your larger louder life.

IV Old death, Will you come with me today To meet someone I love? We can walk there along the river Past tenements of brick, And barely thickening April branches: The river's grey-shine spinning past us, An orange tugboat, A low-swimming freighter out toward New Jersey.

Will you teach me about her rooms Filled with a westward light, Her books thumbed and bright along one wall? Nowhere the smallest hint of a failed life, No dust balls of loneliness or fright.

Yesterday I sat on her bed, Holding her soft woman's hands. She forgave me for being young, For the scared distance I put between us all these years. her enormous eyes never looked at me, Only her hands spoke, Her fingers stirring so I would know.

Old death, The more I see you, the more I know of restless eyes, vulnerable mouths, Uncertain language of lips.

For I have learned what I came for: My mad old aunt loved life. She only hurt us when she was afraid That it would burst in her. She never gave in to her old age, But expelled it from her, And hung clean sweet living upon her walls.

Paul Zweig