antifreeze

This poem scared the hell outta me a couple of years back. It felt so cold. Almost hate-filled. Now i'm looking at it again and thinking, So, where's the poetic antithesis to this? Where's the antifreeze? Actually, i daresay there aren't too many good poems on the process of thawing and melting. Most thawing people would probably be too busy savouring their ability to feel again to waste any time on writing.

Hmm. Looks like i'll have to write one myself.


Freezing

The coldness isn’t sudden, and at first you notice
Only a little drop in body temperature, as if you’ve come
Into a small museum’s air-conditioned rooms
Early in summer. And you may blame it on
Changing eyesight if you step somewhat nearer
Paintings of lovers, locking your eyes with theirs
Before you move off. As the months, sometimes years,
Pass and more and more you draw
On your childhood to warm you, until what’s left of it
Is only a raised hand or an August beach,
You start to shiver on the warmest days,
Become good at palming cards; a slight touch of frost
Forms on your eyebrows and you find yourself
Thinking almost too clearly. One afternoon
In a high windy park of seesaws, chain-rope swings
Emptily dangling under tossing maples,
You feel how stiffly you’ve begun to stand,
Arms crossed, regarding the traffic
Below on the viaduct. There’s a numbness
When you fold the paper into subway-reading squares
As you head home at evening, an unwillingness
To touch or be touched. Still, you can take command
Of an office in seconds now: Mary Lou buttons
Her upper blouse as you approach her desk,
John rolls up his sleeves. You grow precise
With money, its snowdrifts, its crystallizing—
You, who said you couldn’t add for anything
To a friend long ago. And you begin to hear
Ice crack in your voice; your smile becomes tight-lipped;
Your eyes promise nothing. In a bookshop,
You snap for assistance, your thin arms trembling like
They were about to break; and by now, when you glance
At couples clinging together under streetlights
In a web of glowing mist, you think yourself haunted,

Pretend they aren’t there. Then what was anger
Turns to cold rage. You hate softness,
Pastels and fruited drinks, the bundles of homeless
Like puffballs in the city’s corners,
Read only an inch or two of type down into any story
Concerning forgiveness. At the end of a winter
You huddled through in sweaters with mountain rams
Woven into the wool as they prepared to leap
Across deep crevices, ridges of snow lie under
Your half-open windows. Your hands against glass
Do not melt the rippled glaze, and tears
Freeze on your waxen cheeks as you stare out
Over trees growing full and all the running children.


Dick Allen
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