Sport 9: Spring 1992
♣ Michele Leggott — ladies mile
♣ Michele Leggott
ladies mile
Silence has been important too, pharaoh
gliding through the lips of those who are asleep
Fig crop in my hands, lotus pool in flower
I was in another place when they came to me
and the bright edges of lacunae are seldom torn
by accident Then fall off the edge of the earth
left hand under my head right embracing me
Why should you wish distance any greater than this?
I am quiet and we are writing in the throat
of all languages The library at Alexandria burns
but my heart is a pool where the white birds step
among incipient papyri A world of water
trims a world of fire for Osiris fluid in the blue
and gold of a moment's trust in the driving
page 138
Coming home like a derelict Egyptian, changing
worlds, a baby delivered in a jacaranda mist just
like mine The trees are quiet now, the baby grown
and sorrow gone from the place it lay down in
long before I was born What are we going to do
about that moon in the ngaio tree beating like
a fontanelle? Can we go on reading the summer
constellations that do not pretend to be literature?
Cicadas Avocados But where's that frightening dog
sorrow? Lord butterfly on lord hibiscus spray
are we through crying and the heart's big conversation
with pain? Two sons, two sons and crowning
isn't a light word any more than a light kiss
resembles a dark one Which you are
page 139
Suppose, sweet eyes, you went into a distant country
mad with the honey and the noon in your throat
a fiery drizzle of rip and glory asking: Where
are the words that broke the heart with beauty?
Not as plains that spread into us slowly, but as
a wind wet with carillons or winter's cold isthmus
in the azure year, you will find the frontiered heart
and write a script of stars across its salt and snow
Birds that think in oceans come and go, their chart
behind their eyes that scarcely sleep Your mouth's adrift
with ghosts of fire the salt has burned to noontide
blue Your sweetness ripples through the rain
of a country to which you may never return You
are the still caesura that breaks a line in two
page 140
Leaf, leaf, how can I be sane enough
or mad enough to touch or leave untouched
what silence has to say? Had I your eyes
your eyes I loved this lifetime, wonder's eyes
and the sun's voice against the nights of eaten moons
would my oppressions be healed? Sometimes
fighting and dying are better than anything else
Back to the laughter of alien lips and eyes
how shall my heart find home? I sleep
out of my bones so much bouquet just so much
bite in crystal those cool-dissolving wrists distil
from the sweet landfall water It is dark
within daylight The stranger is made of words
that swing by an island's shadow
page 141
Smile at that mountain where love was
eaten on a morning when the world held still
in the rain's embrace a promise of iris blue
In the heart every moment a splitting of the moon
in the belly picnics of sky and dancing zephyrs
Be loved be happy, feed and be fattened on this
A weekend in winter lemon butter thickening
over slow heat, two candy boys ecstatic
on the juicer, Persian mystics on top of the fridge
glinting elevation and excess Stir and shout
give them feet off the green couch right now the works!
The parrots of my soul have begun to chew sugar
they turn up the music and dance loopsville
one in my arms whirled in a golden mirror
page 142
Running water you are the phoenician's mouth
lute-curved and eating his dreams like flame
I have lost the light of your laughter, very cool
and sweet the breath of limes or an aureole
of waters falling where a hand might cup the breast
of one who like the young moon is white
and strange and slender The gleaming human
lamp on your mad ship's shoulder is a woman
drawn up by the fine chain of silence white
and unbroken about her neck Her full breast
pours out a mirth of stars, bright areolae
or glittering revolution in heaven's cool
breathing of lines which set the double-curved flame
of the lover sea against her laughing mouth
page 143
Jewelling, or if The Silenced laugh
memory from the wheel of white stars turning
against the sky, what should the thought of my heart
do but flood out the empty heavens? These were
my children, my beloved Take them, hold them forever
as you held them first, small bodies motive
in a sea of air and learning the warm animal
from us all walking in the houses of the sun
Lifts, utter mirror of his hand on the wheel
the strategy of repeats that still gesture him
live in a world filling with the tears of Isis
We have been sad too long Close up this desolate
house and drive to where the island's wet light
candours the moon and the river wider than a smile