Bride

Have I neglected you,
in your pink woollen dress,
a pink woollen rose in your hair?

I do not see your blue bouquet.
Your big eyes plead.

What can I give you,
bride in your improvized wedding wear?
A knitted furbelow trims your knee,
a knitted rose pinned in your do.

Why have you wandered
empty-handed from the chapel
wringing your gold-ringed finger?

Younger than I you married in a wink,
no time to hem a wedding veil.
Yes, you said, and your tears brimmed
splashing your short-vamped shoes.

What can I tell you, pink woollen bride?
Your rose unravels in your hair.

I'll knit it in a minute.

There. A flame.
Like love it outburns the world.

In the emptying sky

 

your diamond fire

dissolves like a sugar crystal

into luminous morning.

After the zenith

How sweet
your wide-eyed smile,
your blonde cascade,
your bright flesh bathed in the sea!

How much beauty
stuffed in your little finger,
how elegant your warm scent
wrapped in a white, silk sheet!

There's no one like you.
None as soft, none as simple
as your sweet laughter.

Your dark twin
took you at night among monster to her
world.
(Everything yields to its opposite.)

They made you suffer for your comedy,
the astronomical stakes of your perfected play.
The city singed your deracinated nerves
at 5am unsoothed.

After the zenith you fell
in the cooling summer
into the desolate earth

leaving your smile
in the tender celluloid of the sky
glittering in the hour before dawn.

Broken scissors

Nothing is ever still.
The particles dance.

At night I don't rest. I chase
my bird-shaped scissors.  They fly
flapping their gold-plated rings
into the nook of the corner store.

I stand at the counter enraged,
ashamed.

Someone has wrung
the neck of a bird.
The sad blades
rest in my palm.

Dark and bright

The women lie embracing.
Her dark hair.  Her bright hair.

She says, summer is coming.
The light lifts.  The days are getting longer.

She says, night comes
veiled in my dark hair.

They lie embracing
on the concrete
under the slatted bench.

Flowers spread their petals, their roots
inherit the earth.

Dream of blue-stone

Here we live
among blue-stone lanes
leading between walls
into the shadow city.

Dancers depart the clubs
after dark in their tall shoes,
clattering on the curb.

The watcher in the high window
counts the hours,
boiling a brew on a stove.
The ledge above the range
supports framed portraits.

Etched eyes follow the guests
among the furniture
come from summer into winter
down under the earth
where we whirl widdershins.

Blue figures spattered on white walls
leap and twirl, dive and crawl,
and fade as the stars fade,
exposing spines and skulls.

I call to them as they spin
clockwise into noon,
leaving the gate unlocked,
their voices lingering in the wind.