A Star

She had a heart like a snowflake.

My fingers were always cold

and I was very careful not to breathe

upon my hands as they reached for her.

I never warmed,

but summer came.

The Prayer of Orestes

“Astraea, purest of all the holy ones, so long absent

from earth’s stormy shores, hear me now. I have suffered.

I have suffered sorely. You, all-seeing, know well my faithless crime.

No wall was ever built to stem the fury of the wind in vengeance,

and in these long years They hound all steps

and over every hill echoes the baying of their beasts,

but never have you given unto me death’s cool embrace in judgment.

No! The oak leaves turn over all in silver from savage rolling gusts

and They ride on that dusted wind with wings of the night!

Oh, mercy, mercy, I know that Thisiphone rides ahead,

her studded scourge gnashing brass upon brass

like the wintry teeth of a loosely bundled peasant on the steppes,

her tears more blood than blood can be.

Mercy! She races to rip my bones to ribbons!

Oh, Dike, do not utterly condemn me!

My evil was no new and fearful abomination,

and yet my bare touch murders a jungle of ivy,

the flocks of those who give me shelter decline into disease,

the ocean recedes at my feet so that I may not sink to drown!

I have paid my oath-breaking, paid and paid three times again,

the trace of my wanderings a seam of iron in the soil.

No more, I beg of you! In supplication,

humbly seeking your ear, I have climbed the highest peak.

I stand mere miles from the torment of the fire-giver.

Shall the serpents that encircle your dread Furies

drip their venom ever upon my cursed body?

No longer shall I flee.

Have my life, I love it not.

To your level hand I yield.

Blameless gods, what is this silence, this peace,

this air with nary a scent of doom or flame?

Where are rivers spoiled by my lips from crystal to a swamp,

or trees that shrivel fruit into seeds before it can be plucked?

Have I gone mad, that I can no longer hear the hunting packs,

that my shoulders bear not the kiss of the lash?

Oh, though I die of thirst and am stranded in high mountains

amid the chattering ice of the past, I have found the peace of heaven.”

Imprecision

On a frigid morning some months past the vernal equinox,

a work of a young poet was perused. Her love had treated her badly,

you see, through a failing of character all too common, and so he was cast

as the many-toothed carnivore of the vast seas in spare, sad words.

As always after betrayal, an idealized past was a camouflaged hulk

of stone hopping upon paths wanderers tread,

and so her fairer lovers were awarded masks of great savannah felines.

To their heated caresses she attributed an end to chaos.

The language of the poem drew an involuntary smirk,

as if the manner of sharpening claws

was the only difference between the lion and a lioness.

Memory

Laura, today I sought you in streets while the rain was carried in the wind.

Some weeks ago I almost baptized a cat in your honor

but I decided not to let the world know your name.

I am never brave enough to speak of your lips or eyes,

or your hair (grey as wolves would be if we had not killed the wolves),

and somewhere you are grinning when I cower at your gaze.

Today I was playing at a matador with onrushing headlights,

taking all the time that was necessary in order

to understand Petrarch: there are many indisputable reasons

one must never write about a woman unless she is already dead.