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Lloyd Addison
In the year of the ninth moon's passage
when the cradle was full of love
of the flood of eyes of the big rock's kick
and love cut open
wrecked distances
And time / was it?/ a still breath's bundle
stood on head in the air by the heels
and squealed in a clenched-fisted silence
at the sea and the ship's bottom fallen
and the milk rock pendulum of a breast fed it breath
and keels of the closed-in rocked-in stockinged sea
made a lap the world --
bounced you on pigeon-toed columns of feedings
what happening-to-life your selflessness
to self-possession would dispossess the same questioning
you in your time it knocks
A bell and rattle,
a smell of roses,
a leather Bible,
and angry voices . . .
They say, I love you.
They shout, You must!
The light is telling
terrible stories.
But night at the window
whispers, Never mind.
Be true, be true
to your own strange kind.
Wind, just arisen--
(Off what cool mattress of marsh-moss
In tented boughs leaf-drawn before the stars,
Or niche of cliff under the eagles?)
You of living things,
So gay and tender and full of play--
Why do you blow on my thoughts--like cut flowers
Gathered and laid to dry on this paper, rolled out of dead wood?
I see you
Shaking that flower at me with soft invitation
And frisking away,
Deliciously rumpling the grass...
So you fluttered the curtains about my cradle,
Prattling of fields
Before I had had my milk...
Did I stir on my pillow, making to follow you, Fleet One?