Sunday, April 15, 2018

THE AUGUR

THE AUGUR

1.
Thin green clover's clean and sourceless juice, 
memory’s, parthenogenetic, held to my lips
enough to wet but not to drink,
prĂȘtre orgueilleux throbbing at the Lyre
with the extra observance of having nothing to say.

2.
So this is saying nothing. Lips held
to the smooth solar plate above your breasts
a coincidence of shadow in the presence
of else. A moist jealousy within the sun.

3.
Calm paths of mystery leading to mystery
away from away, desire turns into the house
of desire. A conscious limb enters the ring
of the planets, the cosmos, the other.
Bird in the ring of sky. This trial.

4.
Say nothing. Cool clear water
crosses through the stream of sunlight
to quiver, realign, wink at me
Jacob’s shimmering ladder.
Where they cross I cross my hands
back and forth sign them clean:
as something else is clean as silence,
marble in wait for the god to speak.
Birds suspended above the bridge.

5.
Le pendu. The man in a cross
in wait for else, in wait for you
not statue but augury, a bird 
disturbed not into flight but sight, a door
like any river might find bound
to simple folk like us slow
too slow for trees or those decisions.
But the image, side entrance,
we can jimmy open, and the narrative
flows backwards from what I can count.
La pendu is La pendule, 
sonnant minuit, the clock striking midnight.