Mary Baine Campbell reading her poetry.(Photo: Jean Anne Leuchtenburg)

Mary Baine Campbell is author of The World, the Flesh, and Angels (1989), recipient of the Barnard New Women Poets Prize and runner-up for the Poetry Society of America's Norma Faber Award. She has also written a chapbook, "Are Sin, Disease and Death Real?" (Black Warrior Review, 1993), and a currently circulating manuscript, Trouble, from which the following poems are taken. Of these selections, "Calm Before the Storm" and "Evening Light" have been published in Black Warrior Review, "The Kiss" in Southwest Review. "Arrows of Desire" is forthcoming in the Boston Phoenix, and "Life After Death" will appear in The New Yorker.

A 1997-98 Fellow of the National Humanities Center, Professor Campbell teaches medieval and early modern literature as well as poetry in other contexts at Brandeis University. Her critical works include The Witness and Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400-1600 (1988) and Wonder and Science: Representing Worlds in Early Modern Europe (forthcoming, 1999). In the spring of 1998, she read a number of her poems to a gathering at the National Humanities Center.

The bronzed body of St. Sebastian Leaned out at me from a poster At the Art Institute, bristling With ivory-feathered arrows. He did not bleed because He had no time for anything But desire. His muscles Strained to reach me. Even before I arrived He was leaning out of the frame-- Or into the sharp sensation Of the arrowheads. They are coming from behind us, From out of this world. To reach his gleaming, penetrable skin They pass through me Over and over, carrying something Into his heart and his arms Which is not Christian, Though a god is involved. The music is coming from the engine, seven centuries old, And the words of it say love has changed everything For the singer and brought him to life, although he is dead, And through the windshield a brown finch is visible Muttering among the leaves. Dust over green, the green of summer's end. Inside, the dentist explains to her helper that she always insists On Novocaine for her patients if she sees the slightest facial twitch. "I don't feel pain--" says one, "--but I do," she replies, "I don't want to feel your pain or be the one Who gave it." The helper says, "Why?" I wish the dentist had answered, but the time had come To concentrate on my tooth, which was finally numb. So I lay in the eye of the lamp that brightened the face Of Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man, in a Hollywood gym Where the world entered the innocent patient through his teeth and gums. The lamp hurt my eyes. I closed them, and thought of the real pain Of Mengele's real Jews. But Dr. Bernstein Was incredibly gentle, in their honor, I guess, in their memory. She honored my nerves as though they were the nerves of the world, Not wanting to feel the pain of the world or be the one who gave it. So the stanza the pain should be in is missing in this poem, Like a book about your disease in the library of what you need. What good could it be to hear the tale of Novocaine When "anaesthetic" means artless or missing a sense of the beautiful? But believe me, Dr. Bernstein was artful, and she was also beautiful. The music came in on the P.A., seven centuries old, And the troubador's words say love has changed everything For him and brought him to life, though of course he's dead. The sun is higher and summer's an hour older and Dr. Bernstein too Is singing for no reason as she takes off her surgical mask. The kiss turned into a different kiss, The man turned into another man. He left. It was cold on the hillside In the dark. I read the diary Of the woman he really loved. All kisses come to this at last. When I woke up my friends began to call. One had kissed a man who stole Her violin, the other a man She had left like a terrible vice. Their voices were druggy and slow With desires resisted. I told them both To go and get kissed again. Not that the world is about to end Or age come calling soon, But all kisses are fate, and all fate In the end is an end. Why fight? That warm mouth may lie to you Later. Now it is speechless With the tongue of an angel. Between the Brattle and the bookstore A hundred yards of wet brick pavement Fancy with yellow leaves: I wore A red jacket, carried a red umbrella Had a little fever, had a little cough Was alive, passed a newspaper box Saw no wars in the headlines Had no bad news from the doctor Not yet, was alive, was in love Had waterproof boots on, it was only A few yards to the bookstore On an autumn night, the bookstore Full of good books and yellow light, I was Still alive, there was no evidence Of terminal illness, there were no wars In the headlines, I have always Loved the fall the beautiful dead Bodies of the leaves scattered On the battlefield of earth and my own Life persisting. Endlessly not heaven the sky Goes on and on and the problem With human life is that Although there is nothing Behind the blue but more Blue we can't see as far As it goes. Or if we had a ship We can't go there, although It's the same as here So who cares? Or if we had a rocket we can't Go there. Or if we had a rocket And a thousand years. Or if we could ride a light ray And had a thousand Thousand years and our cells Never broke down and our hearts Never broke down and our eyes Stayed fixed on the far blue, Which isn't blue, and didn't dim For a thousand thousand years-- Still we could never go there And even if we could land On that final blue beach, Then what? Your cells would burst At last, your heart break Remembering me gone mortal So long ago and so far away, As mine breaks now, bearing this Immensity of blue. The pharoah was buried with a hundred Little stone doppelgangers instead Of his servants. They were all different sizes but compared to the pharoah They were all small. Each had his own Face. There were no stone wives or lovers. Not one could lift his hand to help. To face the length of death the pharoah Had gathered around him men Of enduring stuff. They stood at attention, or lay In the rubble of the grave, stiff With love, or is it rigid with fear? You can't tell, and you can't ask. But you can guess How joy flexed the models' muscles Later, on their way to the baths.

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