Far back when I went zig-zagging through tamarack pastures you were my genius, you my cast-iron Viking, my helmed lion-heart king in prison. Years later now you're young my fierce half-brother, staring down from that simplified west your breast open, your belt dragged down by an oldfashioned thing, a sword the last bravado you won't give over though it weighs you down as you stride and the stars in it are dim and maybe have stopped burning. But you burn, and I know it; as I throw back my head to take you in and old transfusion happens again: divine astronomy is nothing to it. Indoors I bruise and blunder break faith, leave ill enough alone, a dead child born in the dark. Night cracks up over the chimney, pieces of time, frozen geodes come showering down in the grate. A man reaches behind my eyes and finds them empty a woman's head turns away from my head in the mirror children are dying my death and eating crumbs of my life. Pity is not your forte. Calmly you ache up there pinned aloft in your crow's nest, my speechless pirate! You take it all for granted and when I look you back it's with a starlike eye shooting its cold and egotistical spear where it can do least damage. Breath deep! No hurt, no pardon out here in the cold with you you with your back to the wall.
Sunday, 23 November 2014
Adrienne Rich, "Orion" (1969)
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