Lady of the Sycamore

The Lady of the Sycamore

1.

Sound of my inner ear congested

deer traveling in the winter twilight

wandering officials of the blue banner

what is it her proximity speaks

too close to be heard

maybe that’s finally understood

this is how it always is

you do your best to let the cars go by

let the voices speak until she comes

how far in is in

how many voices

until the leather carriages of Atlantis

brush affectionately past you

common as deer

such artful grazing

touches all of you at once

like nothing

the other side of similarity

sound of inside

command of her deafening skin

that’s how it always is

you open up the sound

and see what’s written there.

How you were her voice

and she is everything she says.

2.

Bat, the cow eared goddess

how easy it is

find her anywhere

Hathor, her horns

a hat, in another condition

a different kind of listening

you talk to that

a lyre

played in the bath

plunge it under

baptizein

over one’s head

soaked in it

what else is music

a baptized goddess clammy

in our mortal bodies

impossibly torn from herself

our singular heartache

watching the ships recede

to Naxos, the way they do

over the round of your lip

the horns are music in the actual world

and nothing but horns on her head.

Her living horns

the way you throw up your hands
curse the phony sun through

those elsewhere sounding strings between them

a whispered ship gobbled down by the sky.

3.

Cow people we’ve been from the first

a crow whose feet

roll about the world

holds up the black

speckled belly of your night

a crow & a heifer & a woman

a man stands by the stream at dawn

the Kral

calls her as if an action–

as if her listening were a made thing

made as sound

she is the sound 

and the other end

you call into her

the night nuzzled 

against your leather tent

by being there

by breath alone

a viking burial 

heard through all the hollow night of you

the woman of you

the night of you

metathesis

she holds open the door

forms mean doors

pass into each other

your shadow learns toward the Sycamore

a cow is speaking in your voice

you snatch a crow 

and poke what you hear across its belly in brail.

***

METATHESIS OF CONSONANTS

[Mik. ix 49 (F) ; Sowa (Slov.) 39 § 18] 

§ 66. Words formed by the transposition or inversion of sounds or syllables are of frequent occurrence in every Romani dialect, as also in the Modern Languages of India (Beames i 275-6 § 71), and in Prakrit (Pisch. § 354). Some examples in W. Gyp. are :– avri `out ', Skr. bahir-, Prakr. vahira ; blavav- ' to hang', caus. of *blav- from Skr. ✓lamb ; druker- ' to predict ', beside durker- (= dur + ker-); hudar `door ' (= Cont. Gyp. vudar), Skr. dvara, Prakr. duvara ;. kodav- ' to hurt' beside dukav- from Skr. duhkha; xulav- to part ' = Cont. Gyp. ughliav-, uxliav- ; len (< *nel) ' lake Skr. nadi; marni curse' (= Cont. Gyp. armani), arma, arman; oparl above' (= Cont. Gyp. oprál), Skr. uparat ' parno ‘white' (= Cont. Gyp. pando, panro), Skr. Hind. pandu; raklo ‘boy ' , Hind. larka. Cp. also the M.Gk. loan-words kakaracka ' magpie' , M.Gk Kapaxciea • krafni, ‘nail' , M.Gk. Kapoi. ; ravnos ‘heaven, ' , M.Gk. otpavos ; skamin ‘chair ,’ M.Gk. cricapyl; ruzalo ‘strong ' = Cont. Gyp. zoralo, Pers. zor  'strength ". 

–John Sampson, “The Dialect of the Gypsies of Wales being the older form of British Romani preserved in the speech of the clan of Abram Wood