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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.
Varuna 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.
Varuna 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,
exorcize 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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