DARK SUMMER

At the borders of the west we threw up towns,

sightless windows, black terraria.

From whence this wind

pummeling roof and belltower,

walls, windowpanes,

fetid, soft with death-rot?

Light sinks,

its crimson tatters

flaring between shades,

the sky’s arena plunging toward the dark.

North sails the victor.

South the ships

drawn by centaurs of the sun.

Eastward

the deep’s agate eyes,

star-specked springs, blazing winds.

Garden of the riverbank,

sea sprouting trees.

Silken ebonies of night, the roses,

this well a black lotus,

shadowed throat, its stones oracular

that night the nightingales performed

for us the stars’ oratorio.

Beneath Berenice’s hair,

your own grew longer,

your mouth a tidal sea.

Your mouth,

throneroom of the wind.

From thready breeze

you loomed your tunic

with which I cleanse

this ash, this muck

of dust and hubris.

At the borders of the west we threw up towns,

sightless windows, black terraria.

If wind strokes your face,

the frost of morning

will erase your tears.

Beyond these abandoned graves,

beyond this sky,

a great nova opens

the heart of the cosmos.

With a shout and a vision we’ll flee,

tumbling like an emerald

through dark eons,

see once more in your fabled gaze

the ocean slice the horizon,

your breath

unfurl a dark leaf

turning toward the light

as the bee steers

by spring’s compass.

The world is smaller than the dream,

tyrannical language.

You whisper when you speak

of beauty, grief, love, tears,

rare ores

uncorroded by the glare of Hell.

Moon-eyed the viper

coiled in childhood’s house.

Its skin bore the stamp

of ancient tribes,

the herald’s silver staff,

the disc of beauty,

eclipses of the Moon.

Its eyes refracted life eternal

over the black grave.

If voice recedes, the garden stays.

Your lead peplum skims the floor tiles,

your shimmering flesh

untouchable as the Pleiades.

Things sift to dust,

faces melt, colors drift

through depths of the inexpressible,

the hazy, gilded mist

that is Elysium.