Poetry

 

 

Patricia Brody

Love Lies

Where is youre love? Where is youre trouthe? he seyde.
— Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde

Tonight I sing, the wind is high.
The stars stare cold in the sky.
In the city,  my love lies,  ten miles silent.
Furious.

The stars stare cold in the sky.
He lets the net slip through —
though his fingers fly,  furious.
He keeps my ballads and my gown.

Eros lets the net slip through
between the viaducts of your  dream
He keeps my ballads and my gown
the silky folds he let slip down.

Between the viaducts of your dream
He sleeps without me, slips the net
the silky folds he let slip down
Will you kiss my eyes again.

He sleeps without me, slips the net.
Will he kiss my eyes again.
Make sweet moan.  The wind is high.
Furious,  furtive.  My love lies.

(with lines from Van Morrison's Astral Weeks,1968)

 

Why She Went

— after Ancient of Days by William Blake

And then she met this stranger, flawed & silver-flashing
quick-trickvoyager who
said, You want me to embrace you.

What a thing to say, she thought. In the harbor, the waves rose crashing.
The clouds parted & she saw the moon.
They saw.
The perfect storm.
Its eye
blazing over them, as in ancient days.

What gale, what gust — they tried to pull up anchor
before the ship blewto smithereens
&in a screech of brine & splinter, they drowned.

The sea was brutal (a touch sweet)
Like those drops of sun
that filter through the tidal swirl.
The same density as tears. They drifted down.

 

 

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