THE KNITTERS

I know them, those horrible women, the knitters wrapped in fuzz,
in colors that grow from the hands of the yarn
into the trembling curd that moves under the network of eager fingers.
Daughters of the siesta, pale slugs hidden from the sun,
in any courtyard with clay pots their poison spreads, and their patience,
on twilight terraces, on neighborhood sidewalks,
in spaces polluted with car horns and radio moans,
in every hollow where time is turned into a pullover.
Knit, green woman, damp woman, knit, knit,
pile up that perishable stuff in the lap of the skirt your children sprang from,
that slow way of life, that oil of offices and universities,
that Sunday afternoon passion in the grandstands.
I know they knit at night, at secret times, they get out of bed
and knit in silence, in darkness; I’ve stayed in hotels
where every dark room was a knitter, a gray
or white sleeve slipping out under the door; and they knit in banks,
they knit in bathrooms behind misty windows, and
in cold beds they knit with their backs to their snoring husbands.
They knit oblivion, stupidity and tears,
they knit, night and day they knit the inner clothes, they knit the bag where the heart is mothered,
they knit red bells and purple gloves to wrap around our knees,
and our voice is the ball of yarn for your knitted web, spider love, and this weariness
covers us, dresses the soul in a knit-purl-knit Santa Clara chain stitch,
death is a colorless web and you’re knitting it for us.
Here they come, they’re coming—monsters with soft names, knitters,
hardworking women of the nation’s homes, office workers, kept
blondes, pale young nuns. Sailors knit,
sick old ladies hidden behind screens knit for their insomnia,
huge frayed fringes of knitting fly out of skyscrapers, the city
is tangled in yarn like strands of green and violet vomit.
Now they’re here, now they’re getting up without a word,
only their hands where gleaming needles flash,
and they have hands in their faces, hands coming out of their breasts, they’re
centipedes they’re centihands knitting in an insufferable silence
of tangos and speeches.