The Fifth Night of the Poem of
the Body

 

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Eclipse - for
t.

 

class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">The dark of the rose
opens the hand of the wind

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">&;amp; moonlight scrawls desire on
her forehead as she walks,

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">the city's depths like an anvil, like
the musk of oil

in a far land, a land whose distance measures the threads of
their longing.

 

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">The poem is black, then red, &;amp;
when it opens its heart

black wings soar like dogs torn from their leashes, and
everything

that will be known is also known already, and the heart that is
closed

knows nothing that will be known, and the circus closing down,
the clowns weeping?

 

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Nijinsky says I speak in rhymes because
I am a rhyme myself, dancing prone

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">in the doors that slowly open, slowly
shut, then open, and one book

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">high, lone, upright on the shelf will
not very easily guide you home.

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">The spirit makes the metric break. The
rhymes are words one must forsake.

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> 

class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Everything is bidden
and unbidden in the oasis where I gather you.

class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Lacan enters me like a
poem, a serpent, a devourer, and then so pure he rises

class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">in the light of your
being. He humbles himself before you, rises, takes your
hand.

There is no place further from you than this distant
land.

 

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Tonight the words are whirlwind, I sow
the chaff with tears and wander

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">where the dark plots are unknowing,
where my heart skyrockets and tumbles

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">like the jenny-girl spun on the circus
lamp, the menagerie suspended, figure eights

class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">above the slow touch
of a single feather, or a lamp going out into the dark.

class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in
0pt"> 

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Love is austere, it beckons us to the
place that will be denied,

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">until we burn ourselves clean in fires
so hot they cloak the sun in asbestos,

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">and the dark eclipse that foretells our
sojourns and our forgettings,

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">the blood rose spidered on your wrist
against my wrist,

 

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">the meaning of what will be gathered and
its meaninglessness,

the harbor with its dark shoals, with its lanterns and
moaning horns,

the river with its shimmerlights and ripples, its slow tugs and
ebbs,

these words that seek you in the dark where I cannot
follow?

 

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">?

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> 

class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Soft the night was,
where we joined our hearts, the sweetness

class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">like the red dusk
stealing across the face of the moon

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">as the earth slowly, gradually, like the
sweetest lover, inserted herself

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">against the face of the sun, and the
stars leapt up like sparks,

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> 

class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">like angels made of
fire, like the words we have spoken?the night that
falls

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">and the night that summons us, the dark
and light intertwined like bodies

class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">O my soul, my little
one, where you go and I follow, where these
words

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">make a new earth more solid and real,
beyond sorrow or confusion?

class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in
0pt"> 

style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">This is the fifth night of the poem of
the body.