HONEY:
an opera
1.
pretend: what they are can be
found at the table laid with a
cloth, in the fingernail tapping at
the window. that there is an echo
and reflection. that what you put
into the city it gives back. that
the barroom is waiting on your
promise. that a song which rises
from beneath the legs, out the air
within the middle of you, there is
a candy of place, ribs of a
gleaming sentence, prize, say.
we sleep name night sleep in the
same air owl-creased.
2.
he would live by the book, the
number, raise it in sequence, see
it lie carefully into forms, charts,
that you live in the same house of
your readings, that a word
doesn't describe a thing, but
mimics relation, he is sewn to this
thus so, find the thread which
snags on my lip, and looking,
looking at the words will they
reflect at the yard, on the side of
the house, deep in the bed,
outside of it all indescribed,
unmade if it isn't first written. we
blow efforts melting off like
smoke rings.
it is middle night and the crickets
sing from the railbed. the lamps
showed their beams changing
through the milling crowd, see it
pass now and then her face,
obedient to a festival, a colorless
weakening joy. the stars work
without time, nothing resists
them. the light they make is
unused. without signal all is
ghost, unmemorable.
3.
whenever there was news she
would go down into the field,
down through the broken arm
shade, the dark sheath of hedges,
the path bare, red, noon, to the
bee boxes, the wicker barrels,
and she'd stand by, the hole like
fingers curved around a mouth,
here the bees come and go heavy,
sagged flight---i think and its
arrival is an air borne husk, some
laden in flower-taste, some the
acrid swollen tongue, she'd stand
(salten glare, lemon, dark-
looking) she'd crouch nearby and
in her words lace between the
humming, I see the wind by the
shape the insect takes, she'd
kneel there and tell news into the
hive, onto the coming, going bee
hole, what her voice is, a knife
drawn up out of the jar, begins
the day, or night leaks suddenly
from a needleprick. the hive is
heavy, and pulses with heat all
night long. her voice is not here.
honey comes from the mouth of
bees, and the wing-bits papering
my own lips.
4.
it is mute, what the night doesn't
say to us. they believe in origin,
in tides, in the shining bodies
above, the secretive gland of
water and of illumined night
time. in the inkwell the edges are
crimson. love goes from
(daylight practise) to night: seed-
thieving, shimmering knots of
thee, thou, the insect, the fish, the
tide, wind in agreement. surely
see with eye, breath and mouth.
what shines on you, on me also.
can you pick up the spoon you've
dropped. can you unhem the
uniform of speech. it sounds like
a row of flowers, the shutters of a
house. it sounds like a wooden
construction. don't look. my
spine breathes, with the low
flames just there, what eats the
fresh stitchings away in the pines
their black teeth bladed onto the
milk of night sky, the fall of it the
curve of it my thoughts made by
the arch of your back, the saying,
how the bodies racked open
blown husks their shattering
seeds your face and hair with all
the sky your hands the column of
voices shaped onto the wood.
5.
the mathematician's garden. the
linguist. the birds and the
diminished taste for killing. the
morning cough. the water
fountain. the scissors opened
wrist of this, the envelope, the
letter opened into the soft yellow
skin, the sigh, the red swelling
voice inside, the black cords of
sorrow which lie beneath the
skin.
I can feel the sun going all the
way around now. it makes me
stand, sit or lie. I can see the
cornea of dawn and of twilight
gather the same sky. light is
threaded into night, the earth
drains, the swirl out of bats, what
is black threaded against light.
give me a sign, here in the
riverbed, with egrets like pearls
in the trees, and the black
business of the smokey air.
© Curtis Taylor
|