Love is a country
L’amore è un paese. Off the map.
Its rulers are invisible; children play
all hours in the gardens.
Now vacant, now thriving.
Innocence has a way of discovering itself.
The tourists are uncouth, but
they leave. The girl won’t budge.
A statue
they say.
Her playmate, the Prince,
is lost with her hair in an old mirror.
Kenosis:
or goodbye belief. Say it,
Tata, and enjoy. Say truth.
Say it with a measure of calamity–
a conflagration of wet and dry, a burial
of high and low. A grave, for shame.
Say things like, I have the wind let out.
I have lost sailors. I have, have, blundered.
No one expects it to make sense.
Now,
into a story, where, behind you, monuments
rise from the past and your episodes.
In this one, Neptune is attempting murder,
(Nobody) means you
and we (could ask) but
we won’t. The beach is
made sandy just for that purpose.
Don”t be nice, you have to survive.
On the beach alone sometimes
Beware they’ll light fires
warn neighbors Hurry
Don’t look
Hurry you have the wind let out.
Don’t look you have monsters
called by name. You should
not have to run far.
Run don’t walk to the nearest ditch.
Lay down you have
Lay down under you
full Wind. Nobody
says
Come we want this Nobody
we want you
by the bed. Beside our things. Nobody
listen,
had answers, open-mouthed, windy
when you asked from the mast, knots
apart, still lashed to the bag but not
invisible
(broken mast, ripped knots, fair warning)
Nobody did it, Nobody echoed
sea of stones mashed neatly killing
the men but No you said
not yet No
you wept
for Penelope, the Sirens
and climbed down.
originally published in Snow Monkey’s Anemone Sidecar