Bright Pathway

Posts Tagged ‘modernist’

You came with a fan
of leaves like those
we shunt the wind with
or use to keep the light
from our eyes.
What have you there, I asked
and your face
for an instant bowed like the golden
bearded heads of grain to wind or scythe.

Then you eyed me
with the dark,
seductive eyes of thieves
masked in the face that marks them.
Too often
that furtive boldness takes you now,
and most when you come
to me wanting a kiss
or love. Which you always get
and go away
primping.

What is it, I said again
and you held it out
to me, gracefully,
as I’ve seen you dangle
a beautiful bloodred berry
when a carp swims near.

+++++++“Come, eat of my bread, and drink
+++++++of the wine which I have mingled.”
+++++++—The voice of Wisdom
+++++++speaking in Proverbs IX:5
 

i

Dawn man, awakened by the singing tide
of light by the river, the first
I saw of you: your shadow
on the surface
mingled with the dipping single shadow of all
the cedars. Your shape

flowed blue
as a flame in darkness
’till the splintering sun
pushed through mountains to fire
your hair, and your body

became a torrent of light
on the still-dark border of the driving stream.

ii

Under the risen sun
you heaved your net, a swollen
silver muscle
of struggling fish. You thrust
in your hand: the glittering

mass knotted and slid a sigh
into the air—the shifting of scaled flank
upon flank.

With a flint you split the snakesoft belly
of the largest
fish,
laid its carcass
upon the rock
and sang
to the morning,
++++++++++“Make me strong!”

You would never have known
youth from old age
if the sky had not
split
from earth, spring
from winter, and winter
from the common rut
of the calling ground.

You can’t see your face
in the river any more. Nor mine,
that has worn to wrinkles
like the tide that worries out
at evening.

Now earth hands hold you,
pull you down like a root:  you never knew
your own springs, cursed
the mother of all living,
forced names on the fatherless beasts.

Silenced, you go before me,
my sweet light locked
in your vanquished eyes.  Even I shall follow,
though you did not know.
For while I, in fear, saw my one flesh grow,
possessed by the life that slept within,

you trod by the river, alone, lamenting
your empty belly,
your unknown sin.
 

My spindle is nearly empty, and the moon
has worn itself down to horns
around which the darkness hangs
ragged as the fleece on the rams’ bloody foreheads.

Your father wrapped your poor, broken
head in wool, certain you’d awaken
from a fevered sleep. Three days he left you
in the cave’s cool mouth,
your stillness a word unspoken
between us.

We buried you
when the wolves came.
 

I should have made you master
his forge
for a place in his favour. Now he
plots with Abel to betray
my womb: to marry Abel to your twin,
Labuda. From Aqlima, plain and
strong as earth, they turn away
and scheme, while her sister
laps up their praise like a thirsty ass.

Qayin,
all my names I gave you,
my secret herbs to heal,
taught you
to count moons
for the time to pick them. You know
which reeds blow sweet,
which weave a windbrake
and which can print
with blood of berries.

You gather beads
of grain and grind them, find fruit
and figs, while Adam and Abel stuff
themselves with roasted flesh
preferring it,
even out of season.
I cannot stand
the bleating
when they lead them to the river. Like a fire
their blood rushes downstream.
 

i

Kept under roof all summer
my hair is darkening, smells of dust.
My knees and fingers have calloused,
scraping out the four corners.
You complain my touch has hardened
I don’t tell you you stoop now
as though you dragged that plough with you
everywhere. I see you standing, still,
at the head of a long, snaking furrow,
blackened by sun,
showing our son, Cain, how to mend
its thinning straps.

You used to come home from the river,
brown-budded reeds raying from your fist.
Now you stride in hungry,
your thick arms darkened by sun and wind.
Our favorite tree, cut down,
drags me around the house while you
sulk, or again obsessed,
hammer poles in the ground.
You call it fencing, and Abel drives
the wild herds in.

I blame it all on your square—
penning in even the stars and wind.
North, east, south and west
you trample the crossroads.

ii

Everything lives in a circle,
but you build on four straight lines.
When we were young, we dwelt in the round
mountain’s mouth—a cave—and the wind had
opened others,
like eyes in the stone. Gourds of water and wine
we kept
in the left eye, and in the right, fresh beddings
of myrtle and hay to dry, and slept
like the clifftop birds
in a circle,
hooked into one another,
arms and legs.

In winter, a boar came down from the north
and slept by the cavemouth,
her body curled up in a circle. She
tucked her snout deep in her lap.
At morning, I watched her snoozing
when, aroused by some pleasure in her dream,
a single eye opened, red as the spark
left burning in our fire.

At night, the wolves came, trotting their rounds
about us, whining, snatching thin scents
from the wind. We had heaped our fire and ringed it
with stones. When the flames burned low,
the dawnlight caught their tails
upswept and fleeing south
toward the empty sand,
their hunger drawn toward dust.
 

Inspired by the rituals
of the Cree Indians of Northern Quebec

Bellies appeased
we always return to the spirit
beak, feathers, boar snout,
hoof and goat horn:
+++++++++++++ tail
+++++++++++++ teeth
+++++++++++++ nails
+++++++++++++ &
+++++++++++++ skin
+++++++++++++ we hang
from the death tree.
Thorny acacia guards
for the wind and rain their portion.
Once, we found a carcass
swinging throttled
where it tried to steal.
That night the wind
in the stripped mouth howled.
Still unmourned, the lone wolf twists
from its limbs.

You love the sound of the river, its broad pulse
drifting in sunbathed rock. For hours your head lies
watching the bright waves thrust out of sight
or ankle-deep you stride your doubled self
to the middle but won’t swim out. You are seeking
the water’s name, I know, to tame it and stroke
the long silver neck in flight, and mount
and change its course forever.

Light as a feather, the unknown water’s name,
yet into the longdrawn noon you harness
thunder-bolts.

For Penelope Shuttle and Peter Redgrove
 

You saw the blood on my lips this morning
and ran away and hid among the cedars
by the river; and though I called all day
my voice came back on the wind.

With evening you came suspiciously, not knowing
the smell or name of death, but sensing it
in the stain growing
now in my flesh.  By sunfall
you found me sitting washed by the fire
and your body stood up white as the waters
plunging where the cedars grow, your whole
desire a fountain wearing the face of stone.
But your shadow fell down before you, a dark tongue
lapping darkness on the ground in the fire’s glow.

Your chest was beautiful,
dark as the flat stones in the river
where we lay our feet to cross
the shallows.

With kisses my lost
lips wandered, enclosing
your nipples with circles
like water where the rings break up the surface.

Under my thigh your thick rod hardened—
White almond thrust up
waving its head. We knew the wind’s joy
in its mounting
limbs.