Interlude

When I have baked white cakes

And grated green almonds to spread on them;

When I have picked the green crowns from the strawberries

And piled them, cone-pointed, in a blue and yellow platter;

When I have smoothed the seam of the linen I have been working;

What then?

To-morrow it will be the same:

Cakes and strawberries,

And needles in and out of cloth.

If the sun is beautiful on bricks and pewter,

How much more beautiful is the moon,

Slanting down the gauffered branches of a plum-tree;

The moon
,
Wavering across a bed of tulips;

The moon,

Still,

Upon your face.

You shine, Beloved,

You and the moon.

But which is the reflection?

The clock is striking eleven.

I think, when we have shut and barred the door,

The night will be dark

Outside.

The American poet and wealthy patron of other poets Amy Lowell (1874-1925) begins this week’s poem by focusing on domestic aesthetics as a woman of privilege might practise them. Her work is clearly a source of pleasure; the language describing it is sensuous, the rhythms leisurely. The iced cakes, hulled strawberries and “needles in and out of cloth” suggest a still life painting, but there’s plenty of movement in Lowell’s choice of verbs (“When I have baked white cakes / And grated green almonds to spread on them”), an energy that defies languor until cut short by the question, “What then?” and its dismissive answer, “To-morrow it will be the same”.

Lowell moves on to challenge the conception of beauty, looking further than the shapes and colours tastefully assembled indoors, and the sun’s aesthetic contribution to “bricks and pewter”. A new thought, though not a new verse, introduces the moon, and although “beauty” is still foregrounded, the French spelling of goffered (meaning “‘imprinted with a pattern”) as “gauffered” adding sonic and decorative texture, the moon is seen in terms that might resemble erotic seduction: “slanting down” the plum-tree’s branches, “wavering across a bed of tulips”. And then there are three lines where the action stops, their seven syllables almost “a haiku moment” and a testimony to the pure imagist technique Lowell could summon so well when she wanted to: “The moon, / still, / upon your face.”

Lowell fills out, perhaps undermines, her perfect imagist picture with “You shine, Beloved / you and the moon”. But her aim is not a still life: it’s a living narrative, and one threaded with personal connection. So she allows her speaker the boldness to declare admiration direct to her partner and muse: and, by identifying her with the moon (“But which is the reflection?”), she proclaims her a woman. The poem’s voice has never been wholly impersonal, and here it’s at its most audibly emotional and sexual.

Not knowing the date or circumstances of Interlude’s composition, I hesitate to name the addressee. It’s well known that Amy Lowell enjoyed an intense long-term relationship with Ada Dwyer Russell, and more than likely that Ada is the “muse” here, as she is in so much of Lowell’s love poetry. But the poem is called Interlude and, although I think it unlikely, the title just might signify a briefer affair.

As the declaration nears its close, recalling the uses of artifice, Lowell prepares to answer her own question as to “which is the reflection” – the moon or her beloved. The scene shifts back to the interior of the house, where “the clock is striking eleven” and the door has to be “shut and barred”. These observations relate to the usual way the day ends, and barely hint at the beginning of night with all its erotic possibilities. If night itself is the interlude the title evokes, the poem withholds description: only the sensuous richness of the earlier description foreshadows it.

Once again, Lowell presents her reader with three outstanding lines (a little less haiku-like this time) that say it all: “I think when we have shut and barred the door, / The night will be dark / Outside.” It’s a deft and witty way of telling us that the real source of illumination for the poet is not, in this case, the one that that shines above the garden. There will be no more moonlight outside when the lovers are together, and the door is closed.