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Swanmaiden
Anubis-black, the
breathless sky blinked its jackal eye
above the field of
darnel, foxglove and rye.
Along the lane dark
cloudberry loomed
lit only by an
antimony Moon
broomed by wisps of
damson-dye.
Obscured by this
starry mask, the Swanmaiden
rose from her
tourmaline lake,
slipping off her
robe-damask and feathery crown her troth to seek.
Thus fate-blessed she
quit her tramontine nest.
Foretold her cygnean
life she must forsake, she flew—
bound to her whispered
task—on bleu-blanc wings
six ells wide to the
distant shore of the West.
The cold crawled by
her, night refusing to thaw, a helix-en-air
purling from each
wingtip dyadic
like a honeyed
sky-note to the Great Bear
urging Ursa to crawl
from his Cimmerian attic
to guide her way with
his vast paw.
Before the dawn she
lit on lofted gable runic-writ.
Upon the carvéd
wood the words ran thus:
“Down from above
cometh my life.”
The Swanmaiden smiled,
adding five strokes by her curvéd
claw:
“Downy from above
cometh my wife.”
This quietus done she
sought an entrance to the warmth.
Such scratching was
heard by none within,
but without it woke
the dunlin and weary pipit
ensconced on their
sandy tumuli. Each hatched a tiny greeting
to their great sister,
who heard not. She only tried the planchette
on the roof; found it
latched.
At last she forced a
window; stole inside.
So silently did she
tread, a calico cat never raised its head
but napped still upon
the hearth, her fur reflecting orange and red
from the lightly
hissing fire.
Cramoisie shadows
danced on the walls
sloe-black pools ran
down the halls
while the coals purred
like copper wire.
The Swanmaiden found
the Master's bed:
above, her great wings
she spread, canopying his dreams with hers.
Underneath he stirred,
cued by the waning Moon not to wake.
As the cock crowed,
swan's form did she forsake,
his desire fatally
linked to a long-necked girl of pallid mien:
none other could he
wed.
Who
is This Ghost
Who
is this ghost I seek or sylph or fay Oh where is she this
one I've seen the long-haired one of shivered limbs of
shadow eyes of downcast day of silvered hands and subtle
mien Why should she only send her sisters of false
hope unlit fairies
Wrecked upon this shallow land in
penance for what hollow deed Shall I find the countermand and
rein the Apollonian steed Or am I stranded utterly til she
or one like she takes pity Is my fate for me to fix or must
I patiently await the Parcae's hex Such as these speak when it
suits not when I beg or pray A sentence is served not to
a fixéd day but to that word and to that thought and to
that hour when walls dissolve and I can walk away
Of
all the damnings across the lost eternal skies of all
appointed sorrow the sharpest is saved for struck
listeners encircled by ancient and haunted lullabies who
love not the living most who love not the day and the
hours not the May and the morrow but as in an aching
dream love and love an unknown unnamed ghost
You
give your love so reluctantly
The
town imagines you a subtle princess slight of waist, delicate
of wrist long-fingered and light-stepped Your skirts follow
you like hounds follow Artemis, rustling and attentive Your
jewels and speckled bands delight the ashram eyes and even
younger men vie to kiss your sandals
but I know you give
your love so reluctantly
Although you smile at the
wind and seem to seduce the very gods with your blue blue
irises and caress your worshipful cats with cool abandon
still I know you give your love so reluctantly
You
talk of flying spirits and long hot summers of India Among
the words are tucked unspoken promises of a red Arabian
night Your dreams betray you, for they float on golden
carpets and dive in warm waters and you tell them in satsang,
surrounded by your acolytes seemingly unaware of their
effect
I, who do not tell my dreams, but nonetheless
dream long and deep regretting to wake, was fooled I had
been thrown high by you I had walked the clouds given
assurances, proffered gifts and gladly met the myriad demands
of a silver princess
Though you were said to be the
flower, it is I that opened, petal by petal Sun-leaning,
nodding with the hours, Moon-bowing, swaying in the dark arms
and legs to the four corners
I had made a bed for
love stuffed it and mended it and canopied it with all
expectance a blanketed refuge from all that is, from all
that is too much
In a grand gesture, you had blessed
it chanted, burned your incense laid on your decorations of
quartz and adamant and walked a flourished circle three
times shedding your sage perfumes
But only I know how
reluctantly you give your love
My hands have built the
festooned halls in which you glide my magic surrounds you I
have loaned you my devis, and they invisibly guard you as you
blithely haunt the world And so you have grown even more
lovely flanked by my paintings of you wearing clothes from
my model's closet You have climbed me like a sequined
ladder and the stars flutter in your celestial hair
But
even after all these years you give your love so reluctantly
La
Pucelle [concerning
Joan of Arc]
The
white-archangel bloomed high along the lane, nodding to young
Jehane as she passed, gentil,
complaisant. A
rill ran beside, lambent with summer rains, brown below but
wan
above, washing with tourbillons1 the
black woolly rocks. A grey heron, inglenooked in the brook's
yellow hay eyed her, grimly conscient
of
the sound of her sabots on the cakéd earth. Nearer still, the
quail des
blés2 bowed
in hedgerows, hidden among the stars-of-Bethlehem, la
herbe-de-la-saint-Jean3,
and la
mauve-musquée.4
They
hunched in their feathery pews, well-ridden of their normal
foxy fears. The virgin's arrival stopped all chase and
chasse5 'til
the saints be bidden.
Her promenade closed when a dusky
warbler brightly warned her of the coming crevasse. She had
sought this moraine as the appointed place, a wild and
wind-blown altar for an almost private mass.
The nimble
maid of Lorraine climbed right down, led by her fauvette
ophée6,
plumuled grey. He warbled a trilling chant-montagne7
to
bless this fourre-tout8
of
the gods, this heap of stone, this mystery-slag
unrivalled. Nothing followed the pair but the white
flowers, turning now to asphodel with calyx lightly pebbled
and
patches of campagnon-clair9 and
clusters of conopode-dénudé,10
which
Jehane did engarland like baby's breath in her still-long
hair.
She removed the dented clogs for the final climb,
her toes cheating death with subtle purchase of the ledge. At
last she reached the bed, dry and sandy with white shale
beneath.
Nearby, tufts of sedge followed a fine line
of water, fed in silvery webs along cavern walls split like a
long-drawn wedge.
The friendly warbler left her now,
frightened by his own echoing calls, replaced by a martinet
pâle. Far quieter, he patrolled with a balsam whisper, master
of these low halls.
The little hirondelle11 encircled
Jehanne, fashioning her a chaplet-en-air12
with
his wind-sharpened wings, an implied corolla of the dell
to
protect her from all fées-rustique.13
Even
so, the maid's silent imaginings attracted les
dieux locaux,14 waiting
through centuries for an honest intention. They prepared their
hallowings
like a balefire row, Michael, Catherine and
Margaret in trinal apparition, musing the maid into a
rêve-bateau.15
The
angels clothed her in boucassin-blanc16
and
ciel-bleu,17
her
collar of silk inlaid. With essence of plum they laved her
hands, and about her feet a bough of musquet-des-bois18
curled
and played.
In the folds of her dress ennaved were
long green needles of cedar and leaves of durmast oak, heavy with
signs that Orleans and Patay would be saved.
At last
they cut the woodbines, freeing Jehane from her bosky
boat-of-dreams, and sent her back up to the real. All that
remained were the lines
in her memory, the clear etchings
of battle and proof, of providence, signal and seal. The maid
was now of France, her mind a book the angels would write, her
body a sword they would anneal.
With a shy and backward
glance she wondered that Michael and the rest—waylaying her
in that heathen deep— should send her on the road to
Rheims
from an enchanted gap of stone. Why not take her in
church, or in devoted sleep, under eaves where all Christendom
lay? Should she henceforth pray under sky and stars, under
Sun and Moon, her soul to keep?
But the birds would not
say. Le
moineau soulcie19
was
silent; la
tourterelle des bois20
only
cooed and sighed, awaiting the end of day.
So she
walked back down her road, guarded by dogrose and danewort and
pomme-epineuse.21 No
Dauphin yet spoke of tests, no Cauchon of trials; only the
waking owl, crying in the fields like an earless muse,
warning
nobly of the nests of Englishmen, and of the fourberie22
of
priests, and of the blood-singed brevity of all fierce
God-appointed quests.
But Jehane had no mind for the
prophecy of owls, Merlin though he be. Let them pierce her
pellucid breast with a dart or nail her to a Vieux
Marché pyre:
it would always be her sweet Jhesus who steers
her course
and her innocent heart. Accepting his summons might lead to
bitterest pain, but denying would be far worse. The maid must
play her part.
1whirlpools 2of
the wheat 3St.
John's wort 4musk
mallow 5the
hunt 6Orpheus'
warbler, the dusky warbler 7mountain
song 8hold-all,
junk pile 9campion 10naked
cone-foot, St. Anthony's nut 11swallow 12crown
in the air 13field
spirits 14the
local gods 15dream-boat 16white
fustian fabric 17sky
blue 18lily-of-the-valley 19rock
sparrow 20turtle
dove 21thorn-apple 22treachery
Asterië
The
sennit in her hat was stolen, picked from fields her father
did not rent or own— a handsel from the petted
heifers cropping purslane near the edge of town.
Calves
in the sedge shied away from the fence as she climbed the
short hill beyond, and the lambs leapt from mayapples
offered, and the geese flew up from the pond.
She lay
that summer’s eve on the wold scented with chervil and
tansy. Above her the regions of dusk did unfold light-gemmuled
as a virgin sea.
Her hair burgeoned the rain-cracked
rocks following the lines of stonewort a-whirl, while
beetles about her beat paths through the scutch, wandering
wide in avoid of the girl.
Bat vied with nightjar for
greymoth and brown; vole gathered orache and hare hid his
hyssop— all unknown to the dirndled girl on the down begging
the Moon to come to a stop.
But the Corymb above her
continued to climb, surrounded by surfeit of sky
edelweiss; and the waters between them bubbled with rime and
sea wrack and red ramage and spice
flung by the Hunter to
coax the sea monsters out from their dark caves above the
trees. She saw his arrows fly, like catkins afire between the
stars burning out fast in the high cold breeze.
With a
sarmentine wand, won from a pollard willow she waved at the
sky and cast crooked spells to bring hydra and draco and both
dogs below to burn all the houses and dry up the wells.
For
her the kine in the fields became wyvern choking the village
folk with soot. For her the cats that haunted the verges were
witches combing the reeds for henbane and wolfbane and
feverroot.
Zevana looked down on this floss-silk girl— her
clogs, her sisalled arms and legs, her strawbraid brow— and
sent four owls to rouse her from her curl upon the copsy hill:
she should not sleep with rook and cow.
She wiped her mind
with hexenbesen and wet her lips with boneset. She lifted
her like a bayadére on a dew palanquin webbed with briony,
and kermoak for a chaplet.
The laverock let them pass
with an orgulous look from beneath his dark green leaves. The
yarrow bent and the groundsel shook and the hart’s tongue
licked its bluish greaves.
The girl woke at home with
eaves overhead and smoke from the peat-tended fire. Raffia
littered her bed on the floor, and her mind danced like
silver wire.
But a cricket calmed her, and her sisters’
sounds, and she rubbed one foot with the other. Zevana
continued her subtle rounds and the four owls left with their
mother.
Ushas
Asleep
The Moon pales bosky
hugging the tattered rim of the wood like a charnel vine,
one dim bloom above the black.
Smell of charlock
deckles the wind, and meadow rue arrives behind, tainting
the squirrel corn and sweet mazzard with its tones
Ushas
is asleep, curled ophidian in some warm cave, her gowns
plissé, her breath of meliot, her zaffre rays reigned in
for now.
Knowing this, the sciomancer blows his subtle
flame to life and greets the golemi as they blink and puff,
their fingers still sticky with dew of deep roots, their
eyes leaking glaire, their heads nine timbrels, all in
row.
He bends this coffle with a brew of coltsfoot and
baneberry, bribing them from their brides, withy wands
unwending them, and they ride the night on a brood of ouzel,
bred to malinger the fogs.
A codling moth patters the
rafters and rains down dust on the books and naked pages. A
clock’s crystal, chatoyant in the candle’s eye, places
all this in the past with each stuttered blink.
As a
cruel charivari, the clock and candle toast the man and his
painted zenana, for the golemi, gone to gather all
whispers, have left their weird wives in a clutch.
The
man looks to them, each to each, desiring that ones throat,
like a wake-robin, desiring that ones lip, like
carnelian.
One white body he peels from her calyx, petal
for green petal, til she stands a parian parted from the
mountain.
Another he limns in air, her verge of kaolin
umber waxing tripetalous, pucelle of chalcedony bedded in
finest bistre.
Another, hair in carcanet of wood anemone,
murmurs a make-believe chanson de geste
as counter-mesmer.
But to no avail: he will
have her cowl printemps as
well, burning it with the rest. Pitiless, he picks her pose as
punishment— arms overhead.
The last he likes in caput
mortuum the best. Purply she lies on a long couch,
sipping blossom tea languidly from a terracotta cup. It
is doubtful she will even look up.
Artemis approves with
arrowy glance, finally rising steeple-high. She cares not
for wives, sylphic or no, and leads the golemi easterly
still dumbly driving their dream.
But at last Ushas
rolls back the rock, cleaving the night from her narrow
shoulders. The wind reverses, waking the plowbirds, and the
ouzel tip and turn.
The mandrake yawns, the vole
scratches, and the damselfly drinks a drop of dew, tongue
like a tiny frond, flicking wet.
The golemwives run from
the room, slipping under the wainscoting like Walkure
mice. Quickly they dress themselves in calladia and calla
lilies, weaving a lie for the nonce.
But their
mud-husbands ask nothing, seeking the warm soil, sighing a
night’s-end. No beetle above them will trouble their
rest.
And he, alone once more, returns to his eau-de-vie,
freeing the chalk from his fingernails. He has no oblation for
Ushas. Artemis, cold and white, distant and undoting yet
binds him somehow, by some roll of the bones above or by
some sortilege from the shore of Cocytus. Her whoredom
vierge has become his hymn.
The
Cypress Wife
Melissa
brushed the flaxseed from her drapéd hair O mallow mallow and
malmsey and picked the bluebells from her skirts and
ladyfern and thistle.
She
walked a'home through moonlight and coppice Sing mallow and
yellow malmsey Unshoed through ponygrass and willow and
horsetail and rushes.
She
thought "I be seed vessel and him wind fellow" O
mallow mallow and malmsey
A
lacewing brushed Melissa's darksome face and greenly paced the
air around her. Melissa licked the night for passing
ghosts and whispered mallow mallow.
The
moisture messed her netherhair and made her silver legs move
nicely slipping noiseless and mothy and lissome O mallow
mallow and malmsey.
"Great
Cypress!" called she to a massive tree "for one more
kiss of him I'd marry thee!" And Cypress listened to poor
Melissa sing mallow and yellow malmsey
She
kissed her fellow by bulrush and weed and eelgrasss and
pussywillow. And turned to white wife of swaying
Cypress sighing mallow mallow.
My
Last Love
My
last love slept on a blue pad in a sea of books
I
moved them off rustling in their jealous stacks to make
room for me
They
waited like shorebirds for the wave to pass
The
Merman (a sestina)
I
dreamt a river of yellow hair my bed but a mermaid thought a
bark of rushes Your webby claws raked the raw silt, the silk
black weeds my tongue swam in circles~silvery fish and
death was green
I
dreamt a hard sky, turtleback green the moon a face without
hair "There I lie and fish, reedpoles my arms, casting
up to the green." I thought, "I am a tree, roots
among the weeds among rushes."
I
dreamt a white island, by rushes encrypt. An egg among
green feathers, mossgreen weeds There you woke like a
nestling, preened your downy hair with pearly currycombs that
I thought were bones of fish
I
dreamt a greensea of vase-shaped fish or "cellos from
which rushes fish music," I thought. They plucked a
long wavering whalesong of death green and silkblack, on
strings of yellow hair long goldenweeds.
I
dreamt a muddy cave, mouth of weeds clumped with sparrowbones
and fish eyes and matted with hair soft under white toes
like a floor of wet rushes or riverbed rocks beneath
feltgreen moss. Then I thought
"And
this cave is but a mermaid thought fisheyes ensconced in
silkweeds on walls of blue-breen algae, a ceiling of
pearl-white shells." And I fish there for dreams among
the black rushes the yellow hair
where
you are an otter seeking fish and I a green rushclad merman
combing the weeds for death or a thread of maidenhair.
Applewood
The
dead may air an applewood of greenrippling bark their bed of
dark below a brown bough shady where it stood in a white
wood shiny with the moon blue
Or
leaves may dance an orange turn round roots above a winding
move through clay black grey and dust and finger the
sleep from those down deep dead
Some
dig dirt and taste sienna-yellow sap like mother's lap Some
spread wide in violet-sacred matricide of fallen earth this
bloody birth red
But
silver-rimed graves in applewood know children too hills not
new I sleep on overarching grass an apple canopy is all
I see you
Iron
Taboo
She
buried her hair there below boards seven ells deep safe
with a needle her goldenthread iron eye dazzling the dead from
her head asleep
Our
bed was straw She spun it yellow night by night and covered
the weft with dead red leaves the branches she tied into
sapless sheaves torches she weaves alight
A
garden she dug wet with sweetbrier, white eglantine Propped
up a grey groom legged in vine priest-king with a penny of
her makeshift croft pumpkinhead aloft
Her
hair lay long like orphrey collar on moss-rose neck The
limetree hung her broadcloth dress her nest of silk
whipstitch over muddy knees apart
She
buried the child deep between roots where the river winds the
bones a mother hides no one finds and built for a boat a
willow bier knotted with hair her own hands asteer
The
curragh she sailt brownbourn down rindle to sea river
daughter yet mouthing a digging song and threw a spoon to
oceanrift In flaxen bindweed seven ells deep I sleep adrift
Death
is an Otter
Death
is an otter swimming rings around the moon river daughter
writing runes around the sun
Life
is a fish gills wide in flight from webby paws scaled
son-of-stars, stippled child of middlenight
Death
is a bear dancing a buzzing whirlpool, fur fearless and
honeycomb drunk
Life
is a bee pollen-dusted in sexy flower hop unaware of ursa
dipping overhead
Little
Bird
Where dost thou flutter Little bird What
is thy song little heard Dost thou tumble from bracken
fern all the mornings fog to burn lowly aloft on redgold
heath breakfast bugs astir beneath naught but vapors up
above which languishing night but now unwove Will I see
thee again at dusk sleekened by thy daily rusk or shall I
lose thee to the claw the all devouring, time's great maw.
October
The
harvestman prancing on whinneying air shooting the dappled
pumpkins king of the Moon
Where are the Wiccans tresses a
testing the loom will she spin long silver thread to steal my
ghost Or must I run waters through greygrass and the
brown leaflimbs slender as a spiderleg
Dig deep
cicadabug chew quietly locustlady Apollo seeks you from the
silent side to burn your wings to singe your freckled
carapace it will not do to sleep or tongue your earthy
womb
Make an offering child of dust on the rooted altar
at river's edge Delve your drinking hands elbow-deep in
brackish blue and weave a worm from maker's mud
and
splay your dancing line longlegged into wind
For
Mary
Like death your eyes go deep and grey Their
marble tastes of breath and sleep and patient black and
cold-ash clay
Your hands raw willowroots a-sway White
limbs move lithe and long-a-sweep and eyes go deep like death
and grey
Winterberry lips do curl away round mine more
murmur and creep Go deep like death eyes of grey.
Mio
Caro Leonardo da tuo padre
O
do not think, my lovely boy— fair face framed in ringlet
curls, silk o'er citrus-alabaster skin— such angel's
drape will cover shape from Devil's dreams or worldly
sin: such beauty here—no heaven's coin— will buy you
only Papish looks and claws of fifty-year-old girls.
O
do not think, my lovely boy— hand with flowing line of
God following lithe Nature's willow curve in perfect mirror
Ess of Soul— such divine amanuensis is required here. Rome
translates this snake as backward script, sinister sign of
Adam's fall and Eve's corrupting curves.
O do not
think, my lovely boy— blacks aglow with atmospheric
white and brightest light subdued in shadow's glaze— such
subtlety, line to tint and colored edge, will capture eye,
confined by gaze to straightened sight, chiaroscuro shading
depth for sons of Lazarus accustomed to Sepulchral tones.
O
do not think, my lovely boy— strumming lute like fretted
swan or piping flute (a childish toy)— Polyhymnia is
worshipped yet. Muses, Graces, Fates and Furies were
pitched from Milvian Bridge and drowned: and water-walker
solemnly wades— does not dance or sing or finger his
kithara.
O do not think, my lovely boy— mind
outstripping history's coils, thinking thoughts Medieval men
mistake, seeing solid air uplift your wings and gaseous
rock, Madonna's vale, containing as much Sky as Earth, matter
sprinkled wide in Pallas' birth like gems in Heaven's veil—
O
do not think, my lovely boy, such musing makes one
better. Blood and veins and scattered bones are death's
concern: Nero may fiddle as Christians burn, his song and
salt a pyramid of dust that time erodes. God will outlast
Giza waiting for the Sphinx to tell its riddle.
O do
not think, my lovely boy, perfection is the point: Paul
reserved your place for penitent sinners. Unabsolved clay
cullers, scrabbling in the mud, picking fruit from Mother's
breast, tasting tree for seeds of immortality, will never
tithe the Trinity or earn a place in Paradise.
Put away
your paints and pray, Mi Fili. Give up your Ge and learn
Theology. With your right hand reach inside, exorcise the
demons of your bet. We know too well you traded hell for
all your Mother's bounty. But She will never save you, Bastard
Child. Christ and you cannot be reconciled.
Dig
Dig
deep beneath your bed, sleeping one— The soil is warm and
sandy and flies like mist from hands that claw and feet that
run.
You will find, if you go deep below beyond the
lowest catacombs that sigh beyond the pale eidola, rocking to
and fro, You will find a room, walled in green so high roofed
in blue so mystery-sheer warmed by red and floored soft lit
by yellow and watered clear, and here you will curl in shapes
of round here the skin will smell of milk and sweat here
the breath and heart will sound here all friends are found and
met.
Crawl up to the moon, sleeping one— Swim by
clouds that brush your cheek, like spiderwebs, lost forever
from the brooming sun. Feel the tide that thrusts and
ebbs lofting you into the white arms, the cold blue light,
the shivering vault. Here pain freezes, memory never
harms, yesterday is lost, the past is salt.
Penetrate
the walls, confound the maze, sleeping one— You are not
confined by day's hard lines, only night's fine confusion, a
net that none need suffer—none, that is, that time
resigns. Look upon the horned monsters, won't you, as they
hoof their fateful lanes of dust. As they must roam and chase
and ravage too, so you look and tremble and weep, you
must.
But when the weeping's done then slay the
beast. Lick your sword and laugh a creature's oath, repeat
it 'til the blood and fur have ceased then to the subtle fires
haul them both.
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