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by Michele Leggott |
persephatta
swimming in the black river a tale emerges
twists and turns about her sometimes urgent
sometimes mirror blank she doesn't play
lazy riverine thought the water lip laps
surfaces and resumes such talk along her flanks
that strength rules out as need walks in
riparian parties onto the wintery tombolo
river I put my trust in plum blossom words
dragged under leaving no language safe
from itself a girl going to meet her mother
is abducted marries death fixes destruction
in her own image the script has lashed her
to sufficiency and reticence those broken limbs
in the current she steps from wholly diffident
persicifolia
and with rescues to effect peachleaved nymph
sorrowing (are you sorrowing?) on the waters
bearing you to heaven's presumptuous grin
mock pusuits and marriage beds collapse tile letter
space where a diction hides her people bride fly out
of his hand who wades the Money Pool at sunset
and stumbles across the aporia at dawn singing
heaven is here in a kiss gifts of prophecy and hearing
pucker the valley of that leaf you copied
to the body in perpetuity your mouth is leaves
on his face nymphae peachleaf bride
of loops and costume change swirling cerulean
in the stream a blue lotus a white lotus vanishing
bride peachleaf nymphae your mouth leaves
persica
his face a court of angels upriver
twelve dynasties east and drumming the morning star
into the arms of the sun your ha is an almond in flower
above the heart that hears his hu and is unbound
uproarious with aeons going past in a shout
a shimmy on the grape ropes a ripple up the pool
beholder to beggar to pleader please
walk with me here in the spring there is no foot
can be imagined without its wing no convention
without the literal honey the literal where
and when and how the literal sleeps as on a body
of water solely its coeval estimate of drift
Angelike where twelve twelves with wings
upraise another hungry drummer of spring
persienne
ah persienne the wind takes my breath away
I see it over the blue islands laughing like six children
looking out to sea their voices rise higher and higher
their mountain is the bellied sail taking them now
to meet everything that was wished in tile printed folds
rivers of air gardens of wind and the sea-going craft
drawn up near the place they have called Paradise
ah persienne breathless they reassign what is given
I was asleep dreaming in a dark place it pressed
on me and I was afraid the weeping dove was lost
to die sea roads (lie air gardens had forgotten her
deft play about the topsails it is recalled
by the high voices in their eagerness to be
embarked this dear morning into the outward
perse
spray of blossom whiter than oceans
jumping together over the reef run wild
into the sea I go to libraries
because they are the ocean the spray of blossom
the is bending passion a wavecrest mountaineer
of the word and the body which reads Everest
floating like that like a summer's night resolved
a glitter in the long hazy dawn and dove
among the waves at last herself morning
and evening star but one body I not my eyes
reading day in day out the little distance
carried forward by the jacaranda in bloom
over the gate and the foot jubilant in kicking
its elemental doubts into the sky per se