PROSERPINA
with her bloodless hounds
the tuscan wood doth haunt
i
would give this moment for all her
swooning on her sicilian estate in heat
and ivory and ivy blessed a-sweat
the endless summer mourning but
as blind circling the banks of Acheron
for a clue sleeping til midday to wake
in a blaze of white her peplos unfurled
knees dimpled and grass stained
cunning her smile like a scythe me
does mow in a reverie of damp earth
and under I descend with her dreaming
black dross the ancient god remands
stifling the sighs and groans of the
an aching in the left arm cannot rise
covered with a dirty foam a wave
then like a movie star uninflected
her yes me takes into the chamber dark
where painted stars glitter above
and the many rounds of births rewind
in this twilight evanescent and yellow
so confusing the hotel the unnumbered
rooms going in and out lightless
the moaning behind the walls the
suffering it must be alive to be
rows and rows of grain ripening
the red pomegranate in her mouth
ii
mortal all my life her I have searched
in books parchment junk and cinders
lifting lids off dead receptacles or
on dark afternoons where drugstores
hide their secret goods among them
rifling for the hint of flesh the photo
immacolata annunziata porca madonna
a hundred years have sought perfume
opium trash inebriation in metal
reflection of her a deity transposed
multiple her raiment of pure light
her repeatedly dying to that light
grass between the ears and amaze!
how it swoons stepping on the gas
intermittent reforms on the way
to the city of Dis whose bright fane
straddles the Anatolian plain afar
dust massive clouds orange sulphur
incense powders pills drowsy drifting
pillows spreading depths purplish
stains of underworld the vast of Pluto
thickets and rivulets lost songs
caught on branches her brief solo
singing frozen when the heart's not
open so many times over and over
on the desolate beach of Acheron
the red pomegranate in her mouth
iii
shifting sands underfoot dreaming a
her immense distance a body draped
in moon ware elusive white on white
sound of hooves softly folding in ear
scant charges of fire behind the screen
painted skin the shade of dawn just
above Heliopolis the chrome studded
where paid mourners weep Osiris
rent from head to foot a thousand bits
what stream eddying darkest as blood
spewed from the archaic wound Mind
houses and houses unlit on the other bank
tilting into opaque miasma fogs pearly
things sifted in swirling mists poisonous
wilt come with me? from somewhere
a voice faint as the tongue's melted mint
how much beauty assumed in burnt air
a curtain of fireflies reducing mountain
to ash the language of nowhere longing
thunder peals of green lightning peacocks
dancing on the small drum of earth
in their iridescent eye multiples of Her
revolving in a harvest of cinders and ire
the red pomegranate in her mouth
iv
from underneath the queen of Hell
her empty seasons of maximum heat
words for love bolts zigzag the sky
sheets of white hot electric embrace
then down again six months passion
imprisoned in mountain of oblivion
words darkening behind words for
love is the oblivion behind the twilight
spent in passion six months deeper
in Pluto's oriental palace black marble
shafts of drained sleep listing backwards
down the Lethe far from the Shiva
temple at the very peak of july & august
where embraced with hot-house boys
words for love streaked her bright lips
carmine pizza cherry coke lachrymosa
her starving hounds red-ears pricked
on the chase through labyrinthine dust
leaves torn from voices bleeding Aγαπή
ever a way out of this gyre profoundly
marshes sunless days bracken weir
her white arms a memory her peplos
unfolded furling in zephyrus' hot breath
the path to the volcano the incinerator
the leap into interior of everything burnt
to a cinder consciousness nostalgia yearning
as she plies wary her small boat of love
through grottos of despair unchained
waiting for the annual release to light
the red pomegranate in her mouth
v
I have been there with her pining below
but me she did not know nor the music
recognize the strains of viol flute and drum
round and round the shadows danced afloat
between this earth and the other one the dark
trees embraced trees rising to a pitch the moon
surrendered its enormous menstrual tide
but me she did not recognize nor the music
resounding from some profound lung
as in a tavern full of drunks all fainted dead
away from the self mirrors were extinguished
light passing from breath into basements
intense the pre-natal heat smothered the whole
planets felled from their orbits went hissing
into the enormous seas of invisibility
but me she could not know nor understand
the why of clouds and sunsets and death
the eternal one but went picking anemones
followed by her red-eyed hounds oblivious
of the tune plied on krishna's bamboo flute
of the sound of rivers rushing crystalline
to be absorbed by the greater Water that
like a girdle embraces the mortal realm
been there with her under the bed of mulch
pining for the other life the other death
but me she certainly could not see or know
blind in her circular and vermilion obfuscation
wending between shadowless monuments
reciting the poetry of what-went-on-before
drinking deeply of her selflessness
been there with her a shadow of a shadow
longing for what cannot be longed for
listening to but not hearing the music
endless train of notes that bind the spheres
the red pomegranate in her mouth
vi
isolate islands
trembling her
hands bits of suffused
the wet and beating
nonchalant and stepping
where small grass
their language echo
took and beat
not the other the
senseless in a red
more lack senses
bereft white under bleeding
thighs underarms
flowers roots darkening sleep
sniffing a stag look
sound of dirt sky
mouth damp moved away
kisses redolent of
stains milky heaving
a dream -ing
distance of the sun its
falling dense vegetable
feet the dance moon
myth mountain deep
the inner "you"
wearing crowns of flame
appear and resin
in the pines sobbing
owl chant midnight
smoking ever more
underground again
the red pomegranate in her mouth
04-03-13
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