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Anthony Rella
poison woven into tissue,
sepsis radiating from the site
where unspoken words putrefy
in anger and hope, toxifying
blood, anxious for salve.
dreams and wishes withering
under reality’s hot sun, lost;
an empty hole in a brick wall
betraying its completion;
absence yearning for touch.
desire unnamed, the chafing
of which tears the hole wider,
fraying thread and loosening
buttons until the entire fabric
compels thorough refashioning.
a deep wound beginning to heal,
Now we stopped looking
to be excused. You
have said it.
You who shrug
the flesh, for
all it's worth.
Woman: stroked
to a fine
cross-hatched plan.
The guts of it!
to take each
thread and loose it.
I can take
the grabbing vines
and slapping branches.
But this!
She hovers above planet
Earth, making strategies
for safe landings, but not
able to see that she is also
on planet Earth, watched
like a crazed cat, a maze-
rat, or a tied-up mime, I
cannot save someone so
high up or far down, it’s
like a black thread about
to snap, as it strains past
breaking point she reaches
for champagne, to celebrate–
bubbles lunge up to break.
a hook for an eye
this ribbon for a slip
there’s a pigeon in the pot
and tree makes the room
your foot on the boards
your head in the sky
no mind if your stockings snag
are splinter-caught
the red thread
frayed or snag
walk now on swollen feet
on feet that are bound-in
with red and orange
with stocking threads
these can be mended
these can be made whole again
It joins a dark pine to another tree;
And shining through its bones a ray of sun
Unearthed it like some graceful skeleton,
Or an unfinished frame of faery
As frail as words. Not even thought could be
More carefully, more delicately spun —
As fine a thread as that invisible one
Of speech and silence between you and me.
The spider lurks there blotched and poisonous.
He is the monstrous god who can at will
Belch beauty from a stomachful of spit;
And dreaming of that silver binding us,
Which Love unwinds and weaves, my heart grows still
And cries that Love is lovely — isn't it ?
There is nothing new in what is said
By either a needle or a thread :
Stitch, says a needle, Stitch, says the thread:
Stitch for the living; stitch for the dead;
All seams measure the same.
Garb for the living is light and gay.
While that for the dead is a shrouding grey.
But all things match on a later day
When little worm-stitches in the clay
Finish all seams the same.
I am sewing out my sorrow,
Like a thread, wearing it thin;
It will be old and frayed to-morrow.
Needle, turn out; needle, turn in.
Sorrow's thread is a long thread.
Needle, one stitch; needle, two.
And sorrow's thread is a strong thread,
But I will wear it through.
Then not only will sorrow
Be old and thin and frayed;
But I shall have to-morrow
Something sorrow has made.
My needle's thread is long and slow;
As a needle goes a thread must go,
And lame and blind a needle is,
Weighed with a mood's profundities.
My needle's thread is long and slack;
A thread must travel a needle's track.
And a needle leads an aimless course
Labouring against the force
Of gathering thought . . .
A needle's thread will not be taut
When every stitch is made to feel
Pressure upon the needle's steel
Of coldly flowing reality.
Fluent as waters that find the sea.
My needle's thread is long and slack;
A needle is foiled and driven back
When the dawn unfolds like a bolt of ribbon
Thrown through my window,
I know that hours of light
Are about to thrust themselves into me
Like omnivorous needles into listless cloth,
Threaded with the heavy colours of the sun.
They seem altogether too eager
To embroider this thing of mine,
My Day,
Into the strict patterns of an altar cloth;
Or at least to stitch it into a useful garment.
But I know they will do nothing of the kind.
They will prick away.
And when they are through with it
It will look like the patch quilt my grandmother made
When she was learning to sew.
I was sewing a seam one day —
Just this way —
Flashing four silver stitches there
With thread, like this, fine as a hair.
And then four here, and there again,
When
The seam I sewed dropped out of sight
I saw the sea come rustling in,
Big and grey, windy and bright . . .
Then my thread that was as thin
As hair, tangled up like smoke
And broke.
I threaded up my needle, then —
Four here, four there, and here again.