These poems are part of a collection telling the story
of Jane and Leland Stanford. These four begin three years after Leland Junior’s
death (that “God-appalling—episode in Italy,”) moving forward through Leland
Senior’s death in Palo Alto in 1893 and on to the cusp of Jane’s demise: the
trip she took to Honolulu, where she died suddenly, by poison, in 1905. One of
the great American love stories, their lives resonate for me still, campanile
bells whose cadence causes countrysides to tremble.
Wishes he had told the boy the truth.
Not—sugar-coated things. Or so it seems
now, looking back. Explained to him how
dreams
and nightmares tangle in the dark. How
youth
and age—He sighs. Ah, Leland, in your
youth,
the world was smaller, simpler, sea of
dreams
you sailed across so easily. It seems
there’s times for fantasy, there’s times
for truth . . .
Wishes he had told the boy—good-bye.
Ah, Leland, Jesus, leave the wound alone.
I know you felt it—feel it to the bone,
but boy—but boy, it isn’t like the sky
has fallen. When they brought the body
home,
he saw he’d never sail again, that sea
gone ice.
Kate Adams