Gretel in Darkness

By Louise Glück

 

This is the world we wanted.

All who would have seen us dead

are dead. I hear the witch's cry

break in the moonlight through a sheet

of sugar: God rewards.

Her tongue shrivels into gas...

 

Now far from women's arms

and memory women, in our father's hut

we sleep, are never hungry.

Why do I not forget?

My father bars the door, bars harm

from this house, and it is years.

 

No one remembers. Even you, my brother,

summer afternoons you look at me though

you meant to leave,

as though it never happened.

But I killed for you. I see armed firs,

the spires of that gleaming kiln come back, come back...

 

Nights I turn to you to hold me

but you are not there.

Am I alone? Spies

hiss in the stillness, Hansel,

we are there still and it is real, real,

that black forest and the fire in earnest.