For the men who inherit my lover,
I offer you up these words of wisdom
(And ladies, you are not disregarded):
You would do well to live in avoidance
Of all things that remind her of my touch.
If she shivers, your fingernails below her ribs,
Peasant, you have not given her a thrill-
Her chill is sparked by memory of me.
Oh, and if you dare descend upon her,
(Even twisting beneath in ecstasy)
Know that her closed eyes are crying my name.
To offer adoration to an all-powerful god
Is rather like praising an invisible child
Who has, after a lifetime of attempts,
Managed to write down one small word
(Which is of course misspelled).
I smile foxlike, my fingers in your hair,
And I ask you impossible questions.
You were bent like the light; for no longer,
I have fallen to the depths looking for your star.
Floating down, I make my one cruel demand,
To have your memories before I die.
In wonder you find an awful whisper
And you tell me of how you fell in love.
I wonder how it could happen. You say,
“With your hands around my throat.” I find your lips.
Something in the mirror on summer days notes
that two fires in the forest become one fire
instantly upon their meeting.
A wind-chime underwater replies,
“One fire is already more than one fire.”
Set in Russia, or perhaps the Far East,
Out of memory a tale emerges
Of a princeling, highborn as Octavian.
In the afternoon, his loyal nursemaid
Came to his chamber carrying water.
Now in vain she hunts for her very breath,
Now her shaking hands have let the vessel fall.
Her horror is a whisper. “Oh, my child.”
His face is dimpled, his eyes small and black-
On the floor, the dust and shards of a vase,
Impossibly old, glazed in brilliant blue.
She crumbles down like a dry pile of bones
And mutters like a sage, “Priceless, priceless.”
He brightly smiles, noticing her presence.
“Oh, dear Nurse, whyever are you weeping?
I only made it smaller, it is all still here.”
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.
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?
