Twenty-one years later...

KATHERINE’S DREAM -- Robert Lowell It must have been a Friday I could hear The top-floor typist’s thunder and the beer That you had brought in cases hurt my head. I’d sent the pillows flying from my bed, I hugged my knees together and I gasped The dangling telephone receiver rasped like someone in a dream who cannot stop For breath or logic till his victim drop To darkness and the sheets. I must have slept. But still could hear my father who had kept Your guilty presents but cut off my hair. He whispers that he really doesn’t care If I am your kept woman all my life. Or ruin your two children and your wife. But my dishonour makes him drunk. Of course I’ll tell the court the truth for his divorce. I walk through snow into St. Patrick’s yard. Black nuns with glasses smile and stand on guard Before a bulkhead in a bank of snow. Whose charred doors open, as good people go Inside by twos to the confessor. One Must have a friend to enter there, but none Is friendless in this crowd, and the nuns smile. I stand aside and marvel; for a white The winter sun is pleasant and it warms My heart with love for others, but the swarms Of penitents have dwindled. I begin To cry and ask God’s pardon of our sin. Where are you? You were with me and are gone. All the forgiven couples hurry on To dinner and their nights, and none will stop. I run about in circles till I drop Against a padlocked bulkhead in a yard Where faces redden and the snow is hard.