Thursday 12 December 2013

Winter Moon (Three Voices)

Underneath the winter-stricken trees
with their ragged claws
is where I lost my heart,
is where -

Hush, my love. Let me
kiss those words from your lips,
leaving just the bulbs, that spring 
might finger into a promulgation.

Besides, can't you hear
the moon? It says,

Can you hear what I say?
I say nothing. Come be here with me
in this nothing. You can call me skull,
pallid husk, pregnant egg; but I
am just old. I am so old,
and I know that love lives but briefly.

                        ***

Beside the bird-emptied lake,
reflecting the bird-emptied sky,
is where I saw the lone
crane fly, and that was I, and I -

But hush, my love: you're not
bereft of your feathers, you're not
some barren woman. You're a winter bird;
and I? I am just your perch.

And besides, can't you hear
the moon? It says,

Can you not hear what I say?
I say nothing. Come dwell here
in nothing - have everything.
You can call me pale and I won't
blush; or a bird's egg waiting to be crushed.
But I am old; and I know love chiefly.

                        ***

Now, on the cottage bed, I am
spread out like a sacrifice. Come
whittle away your whittling knife.
Unperch me, devour me. Moon and scour me.

Into your life I am come,
but not to bring a hunter's gun;
but I shall bring my whittling knife, and 
lay with you - weave me a sky, be my wife.

But besides, can't you hear
the moon? It says nothing.

                 ***

I am here with you now,
in this nothing, the still
of our breathing.

And we
are everything.

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