“The village spoke and said:/ Your roots are steeped in
red,/ your bones are benches, mugs,/ a shawl, a hut, a tank,/ a densely
carved-on tree./ Think back to splintered wood./ No name, no family./ The tale
not fully grown,/ stories not understood.”
Rachel Hadas, “Codex Mirror”
Spoleto spoke and said: The moss will soften the stone,
soaking it into itself, morbida, soft as death, soft as the dirt over the
grave, the lawn over cheap clapboard. You know no stone or moss, only
cinderblocks, fallen fig trees, indelicately named grapes. You know no ruin,
only the sad belly of chain link fences, falling, know only disrepair. Your
house that is only a century old isn’t bruised with time yet, shingles
dissolve, don’t soak sunset like mold on terra cotta, your roofs built over
roofs are young still, you don’t understand the solitary sweetness of decay, of
the brandy-soaked body of a saint, the slowness of it. Think back to a slower
tongue, mouth full of sweet, look behind you and turn not to salt, but stucco,
let your face be framed in crushed lapis lazuli, to fade through centuries, and
you’ll know the pleasure of ruins, which is only the need to crumble that rises
up from the body until it makes the earth shiver in Assisi, lava throb in
Pompeii. Or be quiet. Sit still and be burned by time, know why these trees
twist and rot, sacred, penned in by dark iron, hardening in their own shade,
know how the convent sinks into its own small ribs.
No comments:
Post a Comment