Cover

Also by Sharon Olds

SATAN SAYS

THE GOLD CELL

THE FATHER

THE WELLSPRING

BLOOD, TIN, STRAW

THE UNSWEPT ROOM

STRIKE SPARKS

The Dead and the Living is the 1983
Lamont Poetry Selection of the
Academy of American Poets.

From 1954 through 1974 the Lamont
Poetry Selection supported the
publication and distribution of
twenty first books of poems. Since
1975 this distinguished award has
been given for an American poet’s
second book.

Judges for 1983: June Jordan,
Charles Simic, and David Wagoner

Title Page

Copyright

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

Copyright © 1975, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983 by Sharon Olds

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.

Most of the poems in this collection have appeared in the following publications: Alcatraz, The Atlantic, Cincinnati Poetry Review, Contact/II, Iowa Review, Kayak, The Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, New England Review, The New Republic, New York Quarterly Review, Open Places, Ploughshares, The Poetry Miscellany, Poetry Northwest, Poets On, Prairie Schooner, A Shout in the Street, Tar River Poetry, The Yale Review.

“Photograph of the Girl” originally appeared in The Missouri Review. “Things That Are Worse Than Death” and “The Eye” originally appeared in The Nation. Copyright 1982 Nation Magazine, The Nation Associates, Inc. “The Winter After Your Death” originally appeared in The New Yorker. “Ideographs,” “The Guild,” “The Fear of Oneself,” “Armor” and “Burn Center” were first published in Poetry. “Pre-Adolescent in Spring” was first published in The Seattle Review.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Olds, Sharon. The dead and the living.
    I. Title.    II. Series.
PS3565.L34D4    1983    811’.54    83–47780
eISBN: 978-0-307-76054-8

I wish to thank the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts for their generous support during the completion of this book.

v3.1

Dedication

For George and Mary Oppen

Part One

Poems for the Dead

I. Public

Ideographs

(a photograph of China, 1905)

The small scaffolds, boards in the form of

ideographs, the size of a person,

lean against a steep wall of

dressed stone. One is the simple

shape of a man. The man on it

is asleep, his arms nailed to the wood.

No timber is wasted; his fingertips

curl in at the very end of the plank

as a child’s hands open in sleep.

The other man is awake—he looks

directly at us. He is fixed to a more

complex scaffold, a diagonal cross-piece

pointing one arm up, one down,

and his legs are bent, the spikes through his ankles

holding them up off the ground,

his knees cocked, the folds of his robe flowing

sideways as if he were suspended in the air

in flight, his naked leg bared.

They are awaiting execution, tilted against the wall

as you’d prop up a tool until you needed it.

They’ll be shouldered up over the crowd and