£OB6G3 2. IN THE WESTERN NIGHT | Collected Poems 1965-90 Frank Bidart Farrar Straus Giroux New YorkCopy © by ra Bie ae aed iin he Ui Sof Sie by Mr Calis, Tot ia og Ca Stn De eke ee nigel prs / Fk Bat — Pisa ome Biden 9 ema lig fo prison pint pvt el ri Ba Bas fo emo et a fo Ln rane) Deel en We oe by “tor Mev nt og oy, del Faerie By Rab My res tl sn Fide 9 y Bose “ati, Now Yor Cai ira ra or rm pin tes Wie ig Te Dra" ch hy ay yy Rs" ‘Sj porate carp fom Nii By Role Nyy gy Rom iy. Raby pmo Stare & Su Aer hereby Bre oc TaTnkn Stee mae lg pete fi appr The Ns Ree, Rae Snr The Thepemy Ree Contents In the Western Night (1990) To the Dead 7 Dark Night 5 In the Western Night 7 Poem in the Stanza ofthe “Rubiyat”™ 12 In the Ruins 5 Guilty of Dusty rhe Sacrifice (1983) “The War of Vaslav Nijinsky 21 For Mary Ann Youngren 50 Callus: O45 et emo 2 Confessional 53 The Sacrifice 75 Genesis 24 77 ‘The Book of the Body (1977) The Aref Happy Birthday 9 Bley 9 "The Book of the Body 106 Ellen West 109Ellen West and effortless gestures, the sort of blond clegent gil whose body is the image of her soul sme I must give up But he is 2 fool, He married ® meat, and though it was a wife. an Task my doctors, and they don't know, tha itis ase giv Bur it has suchuo and sometimes, even fee ikea gel Now, a the beginning of Ellen's thrty-second year, her physical condition has deteriorated sil further. Her use of laxatives increases beyond measure, Every evening she takes sixty to seventy ublets of a laxative, with the resal that she suffers tortured vomiting 2 night ‘and violent diarrhea by day, often accompanied by a weakness of the heart. She has thinned down to a skeleton, and weighs only 92 pounds About five years ago, I was in a restaurant, cating lone with @ book. Tas not married, and often did that =1d turn down dinner invitations, so T could eat alone; 1d allow myself rwo pieces of brea, with Date, at the beginning, and three scoops of vanilla icecream, at the end, sinting there alone with a book, bot: in the book and out of it, waited on, idly watching people, when an attractive young man and woman, both elegantly dressed, ‘She was beautiful: wih sharp eae etre, good tone sacar if he took ber makep off in from of you, bing cold eran van ain coef skin, abe ill would Be seni ore bei ‘And he.— {couldn't remember when I had seen a man so attractive. I dida’t know why. He was almost male version of her, — 1 had the sudden, mad notion that 1 wanted to be his lover Were they martied? wore they lovers? “They didn’t wear wedding rings ‘Mheie behavior was circumspect. They discussed politics, They didn’t touch —How could I discover? “Then, when the first course arrived, I noticed the way cach held his fork out for the other to taste what he had ordered ‘They did this again anl again, with pleased loos, indulgent smiles, for each course,more than onee for eaeb dish—; much too much for just fiends —Theie behavior somehow sickened me; the way each gladly put the fod the other had offered into bis mouth—; knew what they were. [knew they slept together. ‘An immense depression came over me =I knew I could never with such ease allow another to put food into my mouth: happily mytef put food into another's mouth—; [knew that t0 become a wife I would have to give up my ideal Even asa chil [saw thatthe “natura” process of aging is for one’s middle to thicken — ‘one's skin to blotch; 1s happened to my mother. ‘And her mother. Uoatbed “Nature.” At ewelve, pancakes ‘became the most terrible thought there is 1 shall defeat “Nature.” In the lanptal, when they ‘weigh me, | wear weight secretly sewn into my belt January 16.‘The patient is allowed to ext in her oom, bur comes Teadily with her husband to afternoon cofiee. Previously she had Stouty resisted this on the ground that she didnot cell et bat evoured like a wild animal. This she demonstrated with utmost fealism, ... Her physical examination showed nothing stiking. Salivary glands are markedly enlarged on both sides. January at Has been reading Foust asin. tn er diary, writes that ar the “inatuat permeation” of the “world of the body” and the “world of the spit.” Says that her own poems are “hospital poems. weak without sil or perseverance; only managing beat their wings softly.” February 8. Agitation, quickly subsided agein. Has attached Irersef to an elegant, very thin female patient, Homo-eroti compo nent strikingly evident ebroary 1, Venation, and torment. Says that her mind frees her always t tink of eating. Fels herself degraded by tis. Has tentirely, fr the firs ime in years, stopped writing poetry Callas is my favorite singer, but I've only seen her once—s I've never forgotten that night =u was in Toca, she had long before Tost weight, her voice nad been, for years deteriorating, half itself When her carer began, of course, she was fat cenormous—; in the early photographs, Sometimes T almost dont recognize her ‘Phe voice too then was enormous—4 heathy; robust; subtle; but capable of crude effects, even vulgar, almost out of high spirits, too much health But soon she felt that she must lose weight, — ‘that all she was tying to express was obliterated by her body, buried in flesh —: abruptly, within four months, she lost at least sixty pounds =The gossip in Milan was tha Callas had swallowed a tapeworm. But of course she hada’. The tapeworm ‘was her soul —How her soul, uncompromising, insatiable, must have loved eating the Resh from her bones, reveling this extraordinarily mercurial; agile; masterly creature — Buc irresistibly, nothing stopped there; the huge voice also began to change: at fs, it simply diminished in volume, in size, then the top notes became shui, unreiable—at ast, vsually not thereat all No one knows ty. Perhaps ner my ravenous, stil insatiable, sensed that to struggle with the sbreds of a voice must make her artistry subtler, more refined, nore capable of expressing humiliation, rage, betrayal Perhaps the opposite. Perhaps her spit Toathed the unending struggle to embody itself, to manifest itself, on a stage whose mechanies, and suffocating customs, Teemed expresly designed to annihilate spirit 1 know that in Tove, ithe second act, ‘when, humiliated, hounded by Searpi she sang Vissi arte "1 lived for art”— and in torment, bewilderment, atthe end she asks, with a voice reaching * srrowingly fr the motes “Ae has repo me LIKE THIS?” 1 ele Twas watching. aeobiogrphy— ia an art; skill; virwosity miles distant from the usual soprano's athleticism, — the usual musician's dream ‘of virtuosity without contentFor they have already, within 2 few yea begun wo date ee day-and-night; his unending hunger _ ten minutes after T ave eaten a childish Whatever they expres rad of eating; hunger which can have no case. — they expres through the style of a decade dad of eating: hanger which anal shall; lf my ond says chat all his a syle be helped erate taf my mind says that al hi is demeaning —She must know that now She probably would ot doa tril in cexcly that way,— thatthe whole sound, etmosphere, dramarurgy of her recordings ae Bread for days on end drives all real thought from my brain en I think, No. The ideal of being thin have just slightly become those oft just slightly become those of the past ‘conceal the ideal sit bitter? Does her soul tot to have a body— tet? Does her soul ‘which is NOT tvivial well her that she was an idiot ever to think “This wish seems now as much a “given of my existence anything iaterial wholly could satisly? asthe intlerble fete 1am dark complesined big bone woop TH re Mande id sity Se pond beech head Burt then 1 think, No. ‘That's too simple,— Sr not Boe «body without body, who can —I wonder shat she fel, now, listening to her recordings =I dors that Lam intelligent; therefore the inability not to fear food Tenow himself a all? oe only ty a scting: choosing retin: have L When 1 open my eyes in the mornings my gest ee avysery isovered who and wht le cn be sands before me Bu then again U think, NO. This 1 i anterior ubnk to name; gender; action; fashion; MATTER FTSELE,— trying to top my hunger with FOOD is ike uying to appease thirst with ink March jo. Result of the consultation: Both gentlemen agree com pletely with my prognosis and doube any therapeutic usefulness of Commitment even more emphatically than I All three of ws are agreed that it i not a case of obsessional neurosis and not one of| manic-depressive psychosis, and that no definitely reliable therapy is possible, We therefore resolved to give in tothe patient's demand for discharge “The esin-ide yesterday was far worse than L expected In our compartment were ordinary people: 2 student, 2 woman; hee chil they had ordinary bodies, pleasant faces, bat I thoughe | was surrounded by creatures withthe pathetic, desperate desire tobe mor what they were:— the student was short, and carved his body as if forcing ie to be taller—; the woman showed her gums when she smiled, and often held her hhand up to bide them— the child scemed to ery simply because it was ‘small a dwarf, and helpless = was hungry. Uhad insisted that my husband ‘not bring food ‘After about thirty minutes, che woman peeled an orange to quiet the child. She put a section jo its mouth —; immediatly i pit it out “The piece fll tothe floor. She pushed it with her foot through the dit toward me sever inches. My husband saw me staring down at the piece =I didn’t move; how I wanted to reach out, and as if invisible shove it in my mouth—i ny body became rigid. As T sared at him, Teould see him staring0 "then he looked 2 the student —; back to me he woman —; then 1 dida’t move —At lst, he bent down, and casually threw it our the He looked away. =I got up to eave the compartment, then saw his face, — | his eyes were reds and [saw Tm sure Tao isappointment ‘On the third day of being home she isasif transformed, At breakfast she eats burter and sugar, at noon she eats so much that —for the frst time in thirteen years!—she is satised by her food and gets really fall. At afternoon coflee she ets chocolate creams and Easter eggs. ‘She takes a walk with her husband, reads poems, listens to record- ‘ngs, is in a positively festive mood, an all heaviness seems to have fallen away from her. She writes letters, the last one a letter to the fellow patent here to whom she had become so attached. In the ‘evening she takes a lethal dose of poison, and on the following morning she is dead. "She looked as she had never looked in life calm and happy and peaceful.” Dearest.—I remember how ax eighteen, con hikes with friends, when they rested, sitting down to joke or talk, I cirled around them, afraid to hike ahead alone, yet afraid to rest ‘when T was nor yet truly thin. You and, yes, my husband,— you and he ove y ders dna me win te Se MPac a de a a on te ground Lam grateful. But something in me refer i How eager I have been tw compromise, c kill this refuser — but each compromise, each attempt te povon ane eh ten seemed to me sere and unre ‘heightens my hunger. 1am crippled. T disppoint you. ‘will you greet with anger, or happiness, the news which might well reach you before this leer Your Fler