– 33 –

Pursuit

I have not had fortune but I have seen the resplendent moths
of Daghestan. I have travelled through clusters of their castles
and found them wingless, lain deep, like the oak apple. And
in Angola I have seen hundreds of butterflies grieving. I have
seen butterflies swerve like the fiddle and the bow. I once
heard a boy sing on the deck of a Black Sea steamer, There is
a small and fragile bug!

The respiration,
the pulses of the heart, the beating that bursts the lid of the shell.
In sago I found the weevil itself, and I smelled the perfumes
of the males. Often I've dreamt of the wasp's tumbled journey,
the mosquito's guilt and thrift, how the ant slipped down
to haunt the grass, how the hornet left only the skin of my fruit.
For insects have a beauty that hurts, and that may even darken
the sky. They drum with their bellies upon the twig. They have
learned to cleanse their blood with light. I have seen a mantis
of a delicate mauve impaled on the flea's single spine. I have
known the mere segmented grub, and I have shared the earth
with lice. In the forests of the Congo, I recorded the stickiness
of swarms. O unforgettable flies of Palestine! O cicadas of
Spain in the year I was born!

– 34 –

Sinking Song

You, me, money and fear—
the rings of planets through our hands.
We are just strong enough
to make the tides work for us.
We could move in the veins of orchids.

In the wonderful phrasing of this evening,
fire runs along us as a man.
All vanished animals weep,
and cities, built merely to fall,
drown in birds.

Come, trust the world—it's still night,
and the moon wishes to dissipate,
and earth groans under its weight of mice,
and God has given us everything,
everything.

– 35 –

The Tale of Dark Louise

Must there always be some stray, hungry suitor?
I strive and I struggle, I can't keep the wolf.
On the day foretold by the travelling scholar,
I take my hank of flax and ride out.
The herring in the sea fall into a trance.
I put on the dress that brought me this shame.
Fire is never out of my chamber,
and the convent's interdiction falls between.
I'm not beautiful, but my eyes are drunk with music.
I will write whatever I want on your soul.
The vine is heavy again with the sweetest grapes,
and the ale flows, and the cellar drowns.

– 36 –

Fast

She believed every dumb line she ever had to say.
She swanned in voluminous crinoline,
her marred eyes seeming to wish more to veil.
Perhaps the darker tresses were a cry to the world,
but there was a larceny in her too,
a jittery jumping off and onto.
Some part of her would always be twitching,
and she'd break up long words
because she liked the air moving.
There are women who breathe only in the lair of spies.
Savageness moulds their laughter.
Svelte in the weeds behind the porch,
she slayed her men with a husky voice,
and the swirling leaves casually brushed her body.