and whirl us around in a spiral hourglass.
* * * * *
before we knew who Christ was,
you and i raised our chalices
and had bulls slaughtered for Apollo
for his blessings to write
our poems in dactyls
(DAH duh duh DAH duh duh DAH duh duh DAH duh duh DAH duh duh
DAH DAH)
where we spoke of the sea and fallen Troy
as Hector lay beaten bruised and dead
around the walls of the city.
like our fallen hero you and i were swept up
round and round
until our arms and eyes melded into one:
a fusion sealed by our lips
until our bodies were pressed against one another's
in the dire force of the vortex
where we fell.
* * * * *
each dimension in their dualism
built upon themselves,
spinning down down until a point burst open
and we droped below into a new era:
the hourglass turned upside down
so the sands begin again.
* * * * *
the sands of Israel--this was our home now
but instead of writing in dactyls
we kept it simple: four beats because those
in the fields with their sheep can only sing so many melodies
(they have to be able to remember it all,
like children: David had it right
when he made his sing-songy words the Word).
we followed Christ around like scribes--you made perfumes with Mary
and i washed His feet--covered in dirt and mud--every day.
at night we snuck away from the camp
to write a poetry for ourselves: four beats
were never enough for our bodies, four beats
were never enough for us to sing our full praises
of God for giving us these bodies
to play with.
we thought we knew pain
until we saw those nails go through His wrists--
like those points that pierce into the blood
we once again fell through the middle
of the double cone
and fell into new sands in time.
* * * * *
how appropriate was it
that we saw His death and now
all we could yell was His name
in our plunge?
time turned upside down yet again
to let us fall back to our original position:
we saw the moon overhead wax and wain
until it vanished from the sky
and we (once again) fell upon the point
of blackness.
* * * * *
there is no metre now.
there are only words.
the moon is barely waxing--we can only see a sliver:
how cruel when before we saw the turning over
of dimensions?
we went from seeing our history captured
in glass and sand
to simply waiting.
we have one thousand nine hundred eighty-nine years
eight months and four days
until we can see the gyres again.
now we have no Apollo,
no Hector,
and no Christ (despite what our mothers say):
there is only you and i
and almost two thousand years of waiting
for the next swirling caving Gyre.
* * * * *
let us make our own--
not our of time and place,
dimension and space,
but of lips and hands,
breasts and chests,
tangled limbs and lovely words
and swirl it all together
in a mixture of love.
Yeats never said that we had to wait
for the next Gyre--
we can make our own.
*http://www.yeatsvision.com/Geometry.html
No comments:
Post a Comment