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CvK |
Watermarks |
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I. Setting Out |
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Then
did they lift their heads, swung
back the gates, feet falling before the
echoes had sunk into the hills; and we
were with them too: their many journeys
on keel-cut sea to wheel-cut isles. The
full-bellied waves bore us through the clanging straits and canvas tore. This the beginning: the
soul-churned sea, bright burning buckler
and saving mirror ever diverting
our eyes from what we should not
see; there the head is severed in
reflected light, backward slash at the moment of mutating. Sea-dark the blood. And this too a beginning: Cythera
then, standing on the bleeding womb,
looks out, and we wonder: can she see us? The
glass-grey eyes, can they love us as we believe we love? And
here: they strode up the
beach close where the land falls
back to desert, and were not seen, too
strange to register, too gaudy in all
that light. And
there too: close by the high
cone tor the silver-plumed ocean runs her
hand on pebbles while an apostle from
the east strode up the beach and with a thrust
his staff broke to a
petal-washed, dark-days’ tree. We were with them
too, gazing out from Sunion, with every Iphegenia waiting for a sea
wind; even too on Iona singing with
frosty breath to Adonai, the Lord risen
high round the rim of the
edgeless sea. Amor tecum,
Adoni! She loved you
too. The goddess of the islands watched your
golden foot dazzle into silver drops the
jealous black, angry as acid sea. Women bewailed you
on Alexandria’s shores, in Athens they
planted blood-flowers on
rooftops. And
this too a beginning. Twin
alphas overlaid are seen as one; no one would have thought it a love-knot. Then up
from the grinding waves to wait: Many
the flash-points spark on islands cut
diamond-keen through mist, the moment multiplying is with us still. And we
differ as finches differ, chirruping our
chants on branches that lead down to plankton-grained, wanderer-filled sea. |
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