Poetry

To the god. Tonight

there are no visitors.

 

Stormclouds rise 

over the near mountains, beyond

 

the finch-dense forest.

For nine and ninefold nights

 

I have waited 

in darkness, lulled

 

only by wind-whine—

unmoving, bedded, mind-whir

 

muddles and buzzes

into body. From between

 

teeth seeps forth

a strange issue,

 

dries linen-white, paler

than graying face.

 

Untouchable.

Sores collapse open 

 

skin-strata, shallow 

basins, suppurated

 

sediment. Nerve-sensed 

I survey the subsidence—

 

does blood slow

and flow around the wound?

 

Tissue-silt crumbles, heats,

as tubers sprout through

 

the eschar, onion-stalks

of bone, pungent. The blighted

 

tendons. Each night

hands return to rub

 

limbs with damp cloths

of camphor, but I know

 

my stench persists. Grows

with each sullen moon, slow-flowing

 

night-water. Brackish,

blackening, the unrushing

 

slough, breeding

like rancid trout roe, dug

 

into gravel redds. Eels

draw close, dazed. Residue

 

of river, place where streaming

stops. Tawny trace. Place

 

where water slows, and flow

is fallow. Have I fallen?

 

My shocked knees molder

and fold. My legs

 

lapse. I will not leave.

 

* * *

 

At times I vision

     a shaded window.

The voice-veil

with greened gaze

     avers: no grove

grows on the hillock,

 

and if below it

     somewhere flow

sap-slinks

 

they are locked

     in a rock-drum,

deep and unrising.

 

And what fate,

     spun from a frayed

thread uncut

 

by the rust-knife,

     will sphere me to stay

if Eros does not come?

 

* * *

 

Bright: a begonia blooms. Yolky calyx whorls

below the twisted stigmas. Petalless yellow: the sepals.

 

* * *

 

A dream tasked

to me: disorder

of grain-sand and light.

The love-wind, careless,

 

carrying, knew little 

of chaff and seed, lifting

but what is too 

heavy. It came

 

to pass. Day

plunged into the far massif,

fell like shatter-glass

into the deepening forest.

 

By my hands undertaken:

you were and were.

Another man might 

have beat the harvest,

 

the hand-flail’s whining

chain, unsettling the scale-shells,

then fan the thresh-pile

with vans of air-holding

 

canvas, color of your hair,

husk-grey. I was given

no tools. Raised my hands

to the slats’ beam-slits,

 

let your prayer-name rise.

And from great height,

over the mountain-shadows,

the winds, thinned-warm,

 

startled cool eddies

of dry-spooled air.

Unweaving the grain,

half-crazed scatter of field-fray,

 

hazed, condign. Rainclouds

followed the crossed

currents, the streaming 

from the sky’s raised face.

 

Were you there, resting

on the low hay-bed,

looking toward me as I left?

Where I did not see,

 

as a last breeze lazed

in the wooden hold, 

the granary.

Now what remains is only

 

cold and golden.

 

* * *

 

A door deepens into the marble-mottle floor. My jewelbox, gilt-crusted, fills with gems, pale, opaque, vivecon, combivir, kaletra, truvada. The box, plucked open like a square-set string. Should they be bezeled, set in shallow-cupped gold, fastened to rusted ears? My arms are furred with sloe-blue molds.

 

* * *

 

The five-fingered god-hands dream.

The thin indigo bird, startled, leaves.

 

* * *

 

Foot-whisper of a woman—

 

You, with paper-scent fingers,

within the bruise-black hall—

 

Go where I cannot. Find.

You, I know your hands—

 

Your legs, they will take you.

And once he is found I command

that his stiff limbs be burned—

 

String him up, dangle him

where all will watch,

where any who loves him

may freely go to weep—

 

You will not find me there—

 

* * *

 

The second task-dream:

to winnow thin

sticks from the sharp-sliver

arrows. Fine finger-work

for tips of small-silver:

by feel to find

the breaking-down

of browns. O were I

an arrow: freed 

from the bow-string 

to become vector—No: 

quivered into one thing.

 

* * *

 

As a pulley shakes

when rope runs

through it. 

 

The bushes

new-bloomed, shivering,

opening the meadows

 

dowered with trees—

heavy-leaved, hovering

above, and the silent

 

star-pulses, alive.

Spring crawls into

eyes and scratches 

 

its way out.

When he comes,

I almost do not

 

notice his light

form, gauzed arrival,

this low black 

 

breeze-blow,

the feathered air

suspending him

 

above me—

when he is not

here, it is as if

 

he is not here.