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Random Songs

Adela: Triolets for A Violet Flower

 

 

At the root of the stem of your violet petals

I sipped the clearest nectar.

Or was it just dew or trapped rainwater?

At the root of the stem of your violet petals

I found sweetness I could not know

Nor forget nor name.

At the root of the stem of your violet petals

I sipped the clearest nectar.

 

Sodden by the monsoon, the summer

Suddenly is all violet water,

Who can know or measure the passing of years?

Sodden by the monsoon the summer

Is only the resentment of color—

Refusing the fading of your violet petals.

Sodden by the monsoon, the summer

Suddenly is all violet water.

 

Now that I have armed my knowing with names

Memory is a violet nectar.

Was it love, listless, left you such name, or scar?

Now that I have armed my knowing with names

My own love wanders,

Unable to retrieve its name.

Now that I have armed my knowing with names

Memory is a violet nectar.

 

July 25, 2002

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When Only Dew Slakes the Waxy Thirst

 

 

When only dew slakes the waxy thirst of the mind’s

Calyx, when dark blood drips from walls of night,

How endure the hour when stars are farthest,

And cold grips the weak coursing of the veins?

 

No dream visits but the faint groping

Of wriggling antennae, dark memory

Of mandibles nibbling at these petals,

Wings worrying the air among the leaves.

 

What sap will quicken in these scarred stalks

When time ceases? What dream will grapple

With the blind hand of night that, breaking

Free, in the chill, will only be a stillborn child?

 

O to wake from this wholèd sleep and let

Rain slake the waxy thirst of the mind’s calyx.

 

 

rev. May 9, 2002 

What Is It in Our Time that Poisons Us?

 

 

What is it in our time that poisons us?

What evil shadow veils our vision

That all we see threatens us—the incubus

Of our guilt, the arrogance of our division?

 

There is a germ of fear and greed eats

Within the crumbling shells of our lives,

And we are left as empty masks, while surfeits

Of hate drive us to the salvation of knives.

 

What triumph awaits our wars of deceit

Where truth will not survive the ruin

Of the protagonists? Our supreme conceit

Moves the torturer’s hand, finger of assassin.

 

But will the mindless pursuit of belief

Save us, absolve us at last from our grief?

  

 

rev. May 2, 2002

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