Читать книгу Now You Care - Di Brandt - Страница 7
Afterworlds
ОглавлениеGwendolyn, I call you back
from your bed of roots, delicious
under moist scented worm nudged earth,
speak to me,
rising from my bed of stone,
finding the courtyard empty,
the gate swinging open,
O prophetess of blood and fire,
your famous ancient lions crouched
beside Lake Ontario,
drunk on the jewelled wine of death,
tell me, in this unexpected resurrection,
as from drowned Atlantis out of the carnelian sea,
as from the sister watching the sister
who lies down
on the long stemmed wet grass under
rumbling steel bridges,
grateful after everything for he
who childishly plucked out her eye,
blinding her into buffalo hoofed sage scented
seeing,
tell me, princess of Babylon,
what would you have said,
had you been able, in that last moment
before the animal darkness,
to speak,
your brutal jewels flashing ornate in the naked
prairie sun,
and in what tongue, outliving for one flaming second
the devastating stages of your catastrophic
loves,
tell me, Gwendolyn,
how should I find my way
among these empty incantations,
these chipped white dishes on soap sudded oilcloth,
these nothing signs
among the walking dead,
the lilies sprouting tiger lips and rust,
the prairie struggling to rememberIn prison we ate rats
its dream wild partridge feathered feast, that exuberant
drumming?
