Two Poems

Two Poems Shane McCrae (bio) Penelope and The Watching Fire She burned the loom eachNight, for heat. But eachMorning it returned Whole, and draped with aRestless blue fabricA wave's skeleton The first few morningsIt appeared, she wasSurprised by the wave She had publiclyVowed she would not lay [End Page 669] Eyes upon the sea Until her husbandWho even as sheSpoke her vow, perhaps Lay drowned in the seaReturned. And soon, sheCame to believe the Wave was sent to herBy the god of wavesTo torment her. One Of her suitors, anAttractive man, butToo young, had told her As her husband's slaves [End Page 670] Cleared breakfast from theRoom, of the blinding Of the Cyclops byNo Man, who she wasSure was her husband Perhaps the bones withWhich she wove were hisPerhaps she would not See him again, butInstead would laborAlways, her fingers Bloodying the blueThreads, at the machineOf her husband's bones [End Page 671] And so, she thought ofHim, long years intoHis absence, as his Slaves stuffed the loom, itsHollow parts, the gapsIn its workings, with Straw, as she watched themBend, who could not chooseHow to use their strength [End Page 672] Construction Workers at Night Two workers, one on either side of the hole, pull The ladder through. The hole is square, two Feet by two feet, one story off the groundCut in a fence between two buildings. They are there to Make sure the ladder doesn't slip and vanish Into the darkness past the blinking Edge of the light cast by the caged bulb, where hellHas sometimes been, to feed the ladder to the thin king Who eats the world. They do not watch the hole They do not watch the worker who Hands up the silvery ladder, but the ladderItself, the gleam it bears from the light it passes through [End Page 673] Shane McCrae Shane McCrae is the author of the poetry collections The Many Hundreds of the Scent and Cain Named the Animal: Poems as well as a memoir, Pulling the Chariot of the Sun. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University. Copyright © 2023 The University of the South