once in lying there upon the floor
a winter frozen
beyond tears
eyes not dead
found February
the same as April
once an icy storm
tore night
limb to limb
tried
to bury it
rent it asunder
& christmas trees
lent the morning
sun
an unbreeze
things hung, life shook, nothing fell
to eyes pretending just then—pre
tending, but they didn’t know this at the time
and so they were pretending themselves dead
and frozen; somehow eyes were this icy, too: ©
not without stillness does thy soul yet make
lying now & always because eyes lied then
although not many i’s can hear the heartbeats
the dead soil on low floors eons long
in thumps thumping like titans of ancestral strum
a dark heart from below this ghost breathes in
the earth-shaker’s snore, his work
seen now in sunlit morning, done
years die again during the night like my friend
who died earlier this year –in waves
& trembling & she who was god then
pays dearly in brideprice to god now;
her life, what’s left of it, shared once with me
in that moment leaves me remembering even now
& god, still feigning death, a breath to life
darkens without reason; life in a death year
fills me to the last with the first…
“i” is not even the absence in this odd
dissimilar of phrase but is calling down
the ice bird in what immortals
whisper still to me neither of her nor of
here; not of the risen up
nor of the half-dead, neither her nor here
a god-spirit hanging in the very air of vanishing
no one is blessed beyond fire where eyes are stung
left undone where no one hangs now
& being is empty & becomes no one again
to fill thy ear not here in everything listening too
who with me like winter waits
knowing where nothing hung, life shook
and not knowing, knows that if i am
possessed or inspired or wounded beyond tears
it is here in emptiness she dies
knowing what she knew then
that she has become the wound
without the woundedness in her
& what inheres in starkness & sigh
through grave and perfect symbol
dies; for she is still pretending
(even now) clothed in winter
& she thinks of April & someone vanishing
wrapped blue & crystalline in linen
with eyes not dead & a hole left
in the sky & right there
where her memory is stung
someone has hung the moon
© 2001-2010 from the essay "Missing The Moon" mythopoetry.com
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