Carmen 12

Which fate arouses curiosity?

I’ve got claws enough for all your questions.

The murmur of your voice is a sea-shell.

Since you are not specific, I will choose.

First, the sparrow cast on a metal pin.

You were so much like the wind, clever girl,

That I gave your talisman to water.

No thundering river received that bird,

Just a muddy stream in a country meadow.

The next (do you recall the day?)

You placed within the tangled grass for me.

A coin, gilded in a land with no gold,

Held for one long year in my black wallet-

Flicked across a counter to the barmaid.

Of the last of your love’s tokens, my dear,

My lungs protest that they must tell the tale,

My fingers wish for the kiss of scissors…

No, I can never speak a word of it,

But, sweet Carmen, listen when I tell you

That I would kill you if you were alive.

Carmen 11

I search for your name in oblivion,

But towering stacks of coins, high-backed chairs,

And other trappings of great majesty,

They all conspire to hide you from my gaze.

They fear you more than I, for they are wise.

I feel that, tapping my way through this verse,

I am coiling around this evil Earth

(My tongue in my teeth like the ringed snake’s tail).

Such a curse, to be my own enemy…

I never know if I should take offense

At my inability to end this:

Shall it be the heroic slashing of a sword?

Shall it be a hammer, mightier than all stones?

(No, your touch is wider than a blade, it shatters)

(No, it was not by force that Troy’s ancient walls fell)

The word your father gave you as your own

Cannot capture the rising of the sun.

The awful pain of war-broken cities,

The ripples in a pool that has dried up,

The cry of a bird that will die at noon,

These things cannot contain your mysteries.

How long can a ship without sails survive the sea?

Palindromic (Halves)

There is a glow that surrounds you, perhaps

A slight remnant of time, near-forgotten,

(The stars white scars upon your slender wrists)

Like the wisps of your breath on a mirror.

Through wind, your words like an echo linger-

“You would find a way to murder a stone!”

Cut in half, I am cruel enough for two,

My love, my demon.

Carmen 10

In color, a synesthetic flurry

Lurks behind the fury of our lives, warm

Like a woman who has never been touched,

Raw as the roots that feed on human blood.

Is there something in red heat that all crave?

Some elemental truth long neglected,

Like a tree bent by grey, furious wind?

It is not satisfying to call lust

By any lower (and less sinful) name:

Can any primal thing be trapped by words?

Leopards in zoo cages are violence

Within the world. If they were of the gods

They would not find their ends in manacles,

But a slave's life is more than iron bars.

For the Sibyl of Cumae, in her Jar

I have found your ashes on scattered paths

And they are three books, and then three again.

No! Do not vanquish the future with flames!

Leave that ignominy for Stilicho.

Au Revoir

I. Bitterness

“You have found waves, but Rome does not exist.

Even if you travel beyond water,

Past islands (the blood of the very Earth),

The foreign trees will not give you the death

You crave, they will render all the shadows

Of your nightmares and make you true as rain.

If you think two thousand miles will erase

My words- I tell you, they will leave you caged.

I shall nearly crush you, my beloved,

But a serpent from fragmented stories

Will rise up from the sea in your defense

(The goal of my caress never realized)…”

I reflect my scribbled curses innumerable times

As in my mourning I seek madness contained in grape vines.

At our kiss goodbye the dread river stopped,

Then carried mortals like the desperate rocks

That are shaped into naught by waterfalls.

Should I forsake your name just because you bear me hatred,

Should I despise the birds for flying higher than the stars?

With a friend, I sit. We drink together.

He asks what I intend to do. I shrug.

“I do not love her enough to kill her.

What can I do? What can be done?” He laughs.

“Give her a breath, your Shade will end herself.

Come, have yet another drink, drown sorrow.”

II. Elegy

This is not the sun or the moon: this is infinite, it is everything.

Carmen 9

Selling unbelieved things to singing drunks,

Bearded face in mirrors (and refractions

In glasses of beer); give us the dark sleep

That comes to you when you forget our names.

Woodgrain

It carves into itself and it mocks

the curves that men would praise.

Did those that fled the gods not

find their fate in trees?

Daphne flees the sun and becomes

the laurel, later Dante iterates

Beatrice and becomes the poet.

Still, the glossed wood shines, the moon courses

through, heroes find flame for their bodies.

From the ashes, eaves.

Spirits

The appeal of Borges lies in knowing

that elsewhere in the world, when the sunsets

were less bright, there was another man

completely unable to have a normal conversation.