“Jane Eyre” and “The Elgin Theater”

Jane Eyre

• “I’d like you to meet my books,” you said
• on our very first date, on the first of June,
• when you introduced me to all the books you’d read,
• who must have approved of me that afternoon.
• When I arrived, you were reading Jane that day;
• the part, you told me later, where Jane, who knew
• the passionate truth within her heart, would say
• to the one she loved, “I have as much soul as you.”
• And even now, three years after you’ve died,
• as I sit in your library, you still surprise me.
• I open your book and read the annotation inside,
• within Jane Eyre, chapter twenty-three,
• where you wrote in the margin that late afternoon:
• “I wish that he would get here soon!”

The Elgin Theater

• 8th Avenue, Chelsea

• It begins one poorly-attended rainy night
• at an Elgin double-header showing:
• the classic British Shavian black-and-white,
• Pygmalion, and Hiller’s I Know Where I’m Going!
• At intermission, she come in through the door;
• you’re buying popcorn, completely unaware,
• yet sensing something you know you can’t ignore.
• You turn around and see her standing there,
• in a dripping trenchcoat, wiping the rain away,
• with wind-tossed hair and eyes of Wendy blue,
• so lovely that you can’t help but say,
• “You look like Wendy Hiller,” which is dumb, but true,
• who smiles, saying, as if already knowing,
• “Well, I wish I knew where I was going.”

William Baer, a recent Guggenheim fellow, is the author of 18 books, including 5 collections of poetry, most recently Bocage and Other Sonnets (recipient of the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize). His other books include The Ballad Rode into Town; and The Unfortunates (recipient of the T.S. Eliot Award). A former Fulbright (Portugal) and the recipient of a N.E.A. Creative Writing Fellowship, his next book, Love Sonnets, is forthcoming from Kelsay Press.