Robert Cooperman

“I spoke not a word though it meant my life,

for I had been in the arms of my best friend’s wife.”

— The Long Black Veil

I wanted to tell my wife,

“Now that my life’s running out in spasms

sooty as our coal-fouled river,

all I can think of is the unhappiness

I heaped on you when I failed to say,

‘Go to Miller, find some joy in this life

that’s all we know of heartache and glory.’ “

I had my own guilty secret

in Grace O’Brien, but feared scandal more

than I loved my mother’s buxom servant.

Worse, an envious mastiff,

I made a gilded prisoner of Emma

in my dark and bitter mansion.

Worst, I wanted Miller to myself,

the friend of my childhood and youth,

the boy I played Indians and swore

a jackknife-bloody brotherhood with.

Still, I let him hang for a murder

I knew he didn’t commit,

raging at his betrayal of our boyhood,

when he and Emma would steal away

for passionate interludes,

deluded that I didn’t know.

For all that, I tried to beg forgiveness

of Emma, but what fell from my carrion lips

was that I’d glimpsed Miller

in the life beyond, and he’d cursed

her cowardice for not shouting in court

they were together when Edwards was murdered.

The dark rumbling of a monster from hell

Claims me, for that last act of lying malice.

“But sometimes at night when the cold winds moan

In a long black veil she mourns over my bones.”

— The Long Black Veil

Emmett raved I would smother him

with a pillow: “Vengeance,”

he rasped, “for your lover hanging

for a murder he didn’t commit.

“I’ve seen him on the Other Side,”

he continued, after a cough

rattled him like a coal car.

“He curses your cowardice,”

a last spasm lifted my husband,

like a canary’s frantic wings

at the first whiff of gas —

and he was gone.

Strangely, I wept,

though we’d been enemies

from the moment

Miller stood upon the gallows,

Emmett silent about his innocence:

vengeance for our betraying him.

But I was no better:

wild as a ferret in Miller’s arms

while the banker was murdered elsewhere;

still, at the trial, I too said nothing.

Death’s grim smile widened

on my husband’s stretched-thin face.

More tears poured from me, torn

between wanting to spit at him,

and knowing the truth he spat at me,

adrift now, without the man

I had sworn to love, but couldn’t,

even before I was first warmed

by Miller’s smile.

“I spoke not a word though it meant my life

For I had been in the arms of my best friend’s wife.”

— The Long Black Veil

Go quietly into the ground,

dear Emmett, and find a peace

you never knew and I never gave you

once you brought me home

to these coal pocked hills,

when I discovered, to my wedded shock,

that I opened like a mountain rose, only

with your boyhood friend, Miller Waggoner.

Though you never forgave me loving him,

nor his betraying your eternal bond

of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn,

you kept your own mistress,

and even on your deathbed cursed me,

while I had to stop myself from flaunting

my consuming fire in Miller’s arms

that in yours never even singed me.

“Dear Emmett,” I sob now —

while the minister drones on about dust,

ashes, and resurrection’s uncertain hope —

my tears jagged as chunks of quartz,

“can we not forgive each other?”

Your answer: the silent clatter

of freezing curtains of rain.

Still, I pray that you and Miller clasp

blood brother’s hands in Paradise,

grip fishing poles, a jug of good

mountain liquor, and find

the trout stream woodsmen dream of.

While I conjure that sweet fairy tale,

I tell myself you’d have forgiven me

at the last, had you the strength to speak.

“I spoke not a word though it meant my life,

For I had been in the arms of my best friend’s wife.”

— The Long Black Veil

While everyone else in this coal town

tossed me coins, afraid my touch meant

they’d have to scrub off my “Jew-dirt,”

Mr. Waggoner’s housekeeper

served me tea in her kitchen, clean

As my mother’s house on erev Pesach.

She craved someone to sigh with her:

her heart beating for her employer

like a caged wolf banging against its bars.

She’d dream of him, pressed against

“my yielding softness,” while I smiled:

she’s all elbows and knees hard

and sharp as a blacksmith’s tongs.

While she cried, I thought of my Hiram,

and our peddling the roads for years,

until he sighed, “How I love you,”

and died in my arms, heavy

as the stones of the smashed Temple.

He’s with the Almighty now,

Mr. Waggoner too, though hanged

for murdering Mr. Edwards;

he was guilty only of King David’s sin

of loving another man’s Bathsheba,

he and Mrs. Ritchfield sneaking off

for infrequent, secret meetings.

Now Miss Early cries he wasted

his life “on a worthless female,”

and I remember my darling husband,

who pointed out the stars to me,

each one pulsing, he kissed me,

“With the Kabbalah’s secret

for prosperity, long life, and eternal love.”

At least he got one of them right.