House of Worth
To trim the hat made to match the fifth white dress worn
this year, a feather of the mourning dove left this morning on the windowsill.
Dresses meant to be worn
once and once only and then worn
by servants lifting
the hem to hurry down the hall. Face worn,
dress quite new.
So many of Marie Antoinette's dresses were worn
to Masquerade last night, the hem of one dress
met the next dress
in waltz-time and the mind, time-worn
flung its doors
between compartments like the locomotive doors
in which Margaret Lockwood in The Lady Vanishes goes door
to door to find the truth. The tweed dress worn
to travel; pillbox hat, no veil, two pins; nothing. Margaret Lockwood watches
one door
when the train stops and Michael Redgrave, who loves her already, watches the
other door.
Remembering the Vanished Lady writing her name in the window-
fog is not a clue. She may have written it herself, the conductor said, and did
indeed suffer a blow to the head outside her hotel door.
The dress was so big,
one's hand is useless to take glass from table;
the skirt approaches while the hand is yet distanced.
At home, the dresses
are wider than doors
and carried one by one into the room she'll wear them, white dresses
are slipped over white dresses-
whole seasons worn
in the stead of one all dressed up
because she who has nowhere to go is most free. Dressed
to listen for the returning hunt; dressed
to see three deer stop by the apple tree near the closest window,
and didn't they come quietly? The window
was open. The wind sought the innermost layer and lifted
the dresses apart.
Lifting
the lid off the box, the Princess of Corinth
saw the gold dress and lifted
it out. She lifted
the dress in the mirror. She shut the door
and lifted
her old dress off. The children lifted
their hands to their eyes. Was there warning?
The room was hot. Was there warning?
The windows
were locked, so when I went to the window
there was nothing to do but bang on the window.
In 1878 hemlines lifted.
The window
would not. The window
sash could be tied to the leg of the dressing-
table and lowered down if the window
would open. The table would drag toward the window
when we climb down the ladder. There are doors
that never open with doors
behind them. On the previous night, she looked from the carriage window
as she passed the Princess's parlor window.
She saw him inside when the curtain lifted.
"What an admirable artist who makes us weep thus, two evenings in
succession,
with the same words gives me the sensation that she is a different woman the
second day from the first.
When the dying Marguerite lets the mirror fall, it breaks. The first evening
leaning
on the table, without gathering up the pieces, she looked at it with terror and
spoke to it from faraway, leaving this world.
This evening, kneeling down slowly, she goes right up to it, her outstretched
hand
trembling, she collects the pieces."