The Song of Sisyphus

Even if I were to split the borders
of this page with countless stars
with leagues of ticking clocks
with wine bowls, overflowing
with thousands of tiny butterflies
and every laugh line in the world

    it would still be nothing

a microcosm of nothing
hidden beneath my tear ducts
   hard and round and heavy

We

We began in the morning with vodka;
We ended at night on the bed.
They came looking for us in the shadows;
They found us at daybreak instead.

We were weary and weak with surrender;
We emptied our pockets, our hearts.
They asked us to stand at attention;
They told us to stick to our parts.

We were soaked in the tar of repentance;
We were feathered in scraps of regret.
They spoke in the voices of angels;
They were angry as saints when we wept.

We spent all the days in the desert,
We spent all the nights in the sea,
We begged and we begged them for respite.
They assured us we'd never be free.

Soon we trembled, we raged,
We corroded with hate.
They grew timid and small in their fright.
They pretended we were invisible;
We grew taller to colour their sight.

We soared over the rooftops to blind them.
We smothered their thick walls in oil.
We left them to dig by the wayside.
We littered the earth with our spoils.

We found the survivors; we finished them off.
We buried the olive branch deep
in the ground. They searched the world over--they folded.
We made sure it would never be found.


**
The first two lines are a translation of Nautilus Pompilius's Striptiz

Eurydice

It was the first time you didn't smile.

I turned around
and there you were--
tiny in your hat and pea coat,
the storm in your face the prelude or the aftermath
and every part of you trembling
like a falling leaf
a fallen leaf
the final speck of autumn . . .

"Can we go," you fluttered, lacrimoso,
and walked on--
knees bent,
shoulders hunched,
pushing slightly against the mist
as if it hurt you
and resisted.

And I--
and I, rooted to that little patch of sidewalk--
I turn my head,
avoid the painful dance,
and wait.

she watched the smoke the cigarette her hand
and felt the fissure    form
      frighten butterflies
already flapping in her                     gut

the silence turned her                      head
but not her                                      eyes
as shadows darted in
and out of focus
across that marble mouth
that mouth like waves of sand crumbling
at the corners
filling empty valleys grain
by grain

the fissure widened
tearing her in half the                       collar bone
snapping with the pressure
until at last
she lay in a dustheap at her feet

**

she turned her gaze
searched a moment

smiled

and the fissure shut
snapping together like a magnet

tonight let's dream of roses
and drift along their petal-paths
into a rounded maze

let's spin into the serpent's lair

let's run the course and wait
until a scarlet breath
finds succour in our veins

until the dust has settled
and all around are golden apples
ripe with memory

the sun set
in a quandary
taking with it
a sharp breeze
a beaten cloud
a cup of salt water

knee-deep in sand
i coaxed the leaves
to hang still
as branches
mute
and shrivelled

**

last season
the trees were bare

last season
the snow fell slowly
and covered all my life

i've learned again to speak
she thought
and fell to writing songs

Magnum Opus

It was midday.

She rose from the bath and went to the bed, splitting lacquered hardwood with the nimble, beaded rain that spun from her fingertips.

Flowered wallpaper tore and grew itself anew as he folded her neatly into his arms and watched the puddles form on his clothing.

Cautiously, she put her tongue to his mouth and met the pulse of resistance.

poppies
sowed themselves
among the dahlias

each grim petal
pinned to the shrunken
air with collected precision

a salience of limbs gropes
for an oblique mouth
to unearth the sour
breath of ages

a damning stroke shatters teeth
jerks the lips
into a vast corrosive howl



***
italicized is from Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse

two candles
burned alone
upon two desks

and carefully they spent
each other's breath

and silently
they circled round
the earth a haze
to fool
the fools
to blind
the blind

to shield them
from the falling night

you drown alone
but i dive in

to sing a spell to march
through waves
to call and call

until you stand before me
with an oar

two candles
burned alone
upon two desks
and carefully
they spent
each other's breath

and one was tall
and one was small

and neither knew
which way to stretch
its arms

talking to you is like
   making love
in a deep well
   scooping fistfulls of oxygen with every word

   spinning into the soft earth
   to carve a path of fire

i want to be
punished
in your
smooth-rock voice

chastised
for coming too soon

Water

She heard only the beating of her heart resonating through the water. It was as if each sound began and ended in her eardrums but its echoes were small persistent streams spilling steadily out.

She listened. She felt a slight indifference that gave way to reluctant warmth.

The small oval of exposed skin left in her face began to shiver, to ebb, and to vanish.

The Moment

"I love you," she thinks, crashing through the overpass in an intensity of fear that at its core is a deep, resolute peace. As every detail tears through her consciousness she falls freely, weightlessly, towards an impenetrable golden calm.

A world away he gasps in his sleep - alert and contained in a thick, resplendent silence.

Closing his eyes again, he knows that she is gone.