~ THE SCENTS AND WATERS THEME

A POETIC SEXTETTE

1.
OCEAN MADE

I want to tell you the ocean knows this
that life in its jewel boxes
is endless as the sand
impossible to count
pure
and among the purple grapes
time has made the petal
hard and shiny
made the medusa full of light
and untied its knot
letting its musical threads fall
from a horn of plenty
made of infinite reflections.


2.
TANTALUS SINNING

Oh woman whom I loved and lost
I summon you in the moist hour
I raise my song to you.

Oh woman, I do not know
how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul
in the cross of your arms.

How terrible and brief
my desire was to you
how tensed and avid.

Cemetery of lost kisses
there is still fire in your tombs
still the whited bones
of my lost mind
burn impossible images
as crows of desire
peck at my heart.


3.
FRAGRANCE

Wakening from the dreaming forest
the sage sprig
sang under my tongue
its drifting fragrance
climbed up
through
my conscious mind
as if suddenly
the roots I had left behind
cried out to me
the land I had lost
with my childhood
etched in my soul
and I stopped
wounded
by the wandering scent.


4.
LONELY SYLLABLE

Over your breasts of motionless current
over your legs of firmness and water
over the permanence and the pride
of your naked hair
I want to be,
now that the tears are
thrown
into the raucous baskets
where they accumulate,
I want to be
alone with a syllable
of mangled silver,
alone with a tip
of your breast of snow.


5.
ROSE NOIR

Do not take away the black rose,
the lance flower that you pluck,
the water that suddenly
bursts forth in joy,
the sudden spray
of silver born in you.


6.
NASCENT

Naiad: cut your body into turquoise pieces
they will bloom resurrected in the waves
This is how you become everything that lives.