Eurydice
He looked back
Before I could change
Thick iniquitous mist
Into a semblance of sunlight,
At least a thin gown
For dignity to cover
Where the naked eyes
Of the damned
Still scorched my skin.
His hero’s song
Assumed I would meet his pace,
As proper hero’s wives all should,
But which of those have been to hell?
Thus his seizing look
Unstitched my still uncertain form,
Ashamed as it was,
Unclean.
Penelope was the seamstress – not I.
When the gate locked again,
I walked the worn path
To my stiff bed above the rocks,
Surrendered Orpheus to the Maenads,
Waiting now on no man’s song.
To my stiff bed above the rocks,
Surrendered Orpheus to the Maenads,
Waiting now on no man’s song.
Every day I swim the sea of souls,
Counting miles to match the earth,Imagining Odysseus in female form,
Swimming her way home,
Beating waves into submission
Over the wine dark sea.
October, 2011
Walking Babel
The carnage of Babel increased in my absence.
Absence of apotheosis.
Failing the language of heavens
These disembodied lights point no meaning,
Curiosities of math,
Nothing more.
My story never made the stars,
Nothing more.
No Cassiopeia to assert my beauty rivaled gods--
Absence of apotheosis.
When did I become a maker of night,
And what are these clouds that once were words,
And what are these clouds that once were words,
Before the Tower fell?
The dust rises from rubble I shouldn’t breathe,
But the clouds contain me
In rapid inhalations
Before air clears to nothing—
The vanishing dust holds stories
That crumbled when human efforts to articulate,
Stone by stone,
Achieved a height approaching Heaven.
Who are we, not to shatter the glass, darkly?
Not to pile stones?
When towers fall,
The wonder is they ever stood at all.
May, 2012
Lieder ohne Worte
Fallen Words have scattered souls
Of Language itself or the meanings
Of Language itself or the meanings
I couldn’t say
Silent under the pressing tide of all
I couldn’t say
Failing to find the tread line linking word to word
I weary in the isolation
Points of no pattern or form
How do humans articulate
So removed each from each?
The blessed count on one finger those
To whom they can explain themselves.
Whitman’s spider launching filament filament filament
Non-infinite filaments
Depleted cease to launch.
Warum habe ich wieder kommen
What did I come back for?
What did I come back for?
For I did come back
The untraveled world has been traveled
I too strove with gods
I search the eyes for others
Who walked the realm of the damned.
We know ourselves
It must show in my eyes
What they have seen all shun
Unclean
Concealed lepers walk among you
Whom will you receive?
He who does it for the least of these...
The formerly damned
The least of these
Fallen Words prevent explaining of ourselves
Lieder ohne Worte
Lieder ohne Worte
January 19, 2012
Eurydice Released
Upon return,
She spoke in strange words,
Or words familiar, but the application
Too old, or new, or still wet
From the oceans between worlds,
Where she accepted instruction
In all forms of water travel.
She prefers her music purple, for example,
For how it flashes dark
Against the black sky—
Says Thunder really isn’t as loud as all that,
How on the other side it’s soft to the touch,
More like tiger fur than large drums.
She loosens her hair to blow wild
For Brahms.
She explains how she learned
That when God separated the Waters
From the Air, in the Beginning,
That they derived from the same substance,
And this is why the streams and currents interchange,
As we interchange, forgetting which Element
Owns us, for the moment—
Sound or silence,
Arrival or departure,
Grief or joy.
At the moment of her release,
She confused Heaven and Hell,
Thinking God might be in both places,
Or how else was this possibly God?
The last gate vanished,
The last gate vanished,
If it was ever there to begin with.
Despite her Odyssey,
Her return has gone remarkably well.
She’s fond of clothes shopping
At the finer stores,
Seeks good conversation over meals,
And favors street musicians,
After the opera lets out,
Where once again the world
Rejoices her release,
While Ovid rolls in his grave
Cursing Peri.
December 6, 2011
la flûte de Pan
Did you plan pursuit, or when Syrinx turned to flee
Did your balance tip to savagery
Faster than thought could intervene?
River reeds quake where she wills you away:
Hooves, arms, bright curling hairAlluring yet abhorrent, is it you she fears
Or a blood pull deeper than her priestess vow
To serve the pure hunt, deer shiveringUnder the white moon?
Your slicing blade hacks hollow reeds
Where wild Syrinx begs release from body Poured as water turns to air.
Did your eye catch the motion of mist
At the water’s edge, mistaking it for wind
Drained in horror of the blade?
calmato
The stillness, where you stand, the silence
Save of hooves crushing stumps of reeds,
The river washing as it ever did,
Did you grieve, back against a tree,
Finger small horns hidden in the curls of your hair? The effort to conjure pity strains,
Softened as Syrinx wasn’t forced to sing,
Could have held her sighs as you walked away,
But who would have heard the whisper
Rise from the sliced reeds you sadly gathered,
Adding breath to wind, renewing her voiceNot in conquest but in pain of guilt
Binding her to others to sustain
Her song, flutes that hold Syrinx in lifeAllowing history to say you didn’t kill?
What shall we fear: desire or its lack?
What echoes in the empty reeds beyondLonely songs lifting through leaves?
What paints your music now:
Longing eased by crisis of extreme,Or warning never to flee the blade of Pan,
Drawing our lesson from one who ran?
July, 2012
Naiade
Formless, dark, the faceless deep
Unconscious of its swell
Before dry land sculpted
Solid banks, definitions
Shaping currents, commerce, Time
Malleable and responsive in wet gratitude
For land to push against,
Hope of sound and sense in
The ceaseless caress of water
Coursing to the limits of its shore.
September, 2012
