I was born to a family wrapped inside the wallpaper of two worlds, drumming the other's disappearance. My voice grew into an impulse of blood wars red and white.
Running between winter and spring I awoke to a nightmare of spit and bile. My grandfather said I must earn my tracks in the night. The earth surged and oozed
: Speak to me. Take my hand. What are you now? I will tell you all. I will conceal nothing. When I was three, a little child read a story about a rabbit who died, in the story, and I crawled under a chair : a pink rabbit : it was my birthday, and a candle burnt a sore spot on my finger, and I was told to be happy.
: Oh, grow to know me. I am not happy. I will be open:
All middle age invisible to us, all age passed close enough behind to seize our napehairs and whisper in a voice all thatch and smoke some village-elder warning, some rasped-out Remember me . . . Mute and grey in her city uniform (stitch-lettered JUVENILE), the matron just pointed us to our lockers, and went out. ‘What an old bag!’ ‘Got a butt on you, honey?’ ‘Listen,
August, goldenrod blowing. We walk into the graveyard, to find my grandfather’s grave. Ten years ago I came here last, bringing marigolds from the round garden outside the kitchen. I didn’t know you then. We walk
If one of you found a gap in a stone wall, the rest of you—rams, ewes, bucks, wethers, lambs; mothers and daughters, old grandfather-father, cousins and aunts, small bleating sons— followed onward, stupid as sheep, wherever your leader’s sheep-brain wandered to.
Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour; The heavy white limbs, and the cruel Red mouth like a venomous flower; When these are gone by with their glories, What shall rest of thee then, what remain, O mystic and sombre Dolores, Our Lady of Pain?
Seven sorrows the priests give their Virgin; But thy sins, which are seventy times seven, Seven ages would fail thee to purge in, And then they would haunt thee in heaven: Fierce midnights and famishing morrows, And the loves that complete and control
Here comes the shadow not looking where it is going, And the whole night will fall; it is time. Here comes the little wind which the hour Drags with it everywhere like an empty wagon through leaves. Here comes my ignorance shuffling after them Asking them what they are doing.
Standing still, I can hear my footsteps Come up behind me and go on
Comment form: