Elizabeth Lara

Elegy

            – For Linda Kunz

I walk the cliff above the waterfall.

So few moons rising still

they shake their powdery heads.

From the beaten rocks a psalm

announces your arrival

in that chorus your birth, your death.

From primeval dust, your atoms

reassemble. You rise among the leaves

of the night-blooming jasmine.

I am not alone here to meet you -

see the hundreds who hold every fragment of you

intact, still breathing, in their hands.

You compose perfect strings of words

your song an imperfect cadence now.

Your radiance startles the night.

*

From the General's Journal
           

Cento

No water. Dry rock and dry throats.


Children picking up our bones


the salt, the bitter, the forbidden, the sweet.


The arched skull of this country, its hard edge   


wells up, like a pool of guilt, in my gaze. 

 
There is snow in the silence of the visiting room, spaces


crackling with messages that end up nowhere


the drill of wheel and return: turning on heels till,   

after the wolves and before the elms – 


after home – empty doorways frame the absence.


I, too, have declared war


by the double-bladed ax: heavy, beyond


a tatter of shadows peaked to white.


And weariness follows, and the infinite ache.


The earth is insufficient for our graves.


© Elizabeth Lara

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