Memento
Fr. 1
Aotearoa is the savage place, seeding
A heap of broken images, mixing
Mortuary photos with life
But this went further as
Milton sends an Angel
To whisper our chronicle
Opened-mouthed
At the lip of headland
We passed the photo around
The world twice
Something you said
When I come back to you
Mon Angel never return
To this place.
J’ai plus de souvenirs que si j’avais mille ans.
Counting the years lost
Like rings on a mango tree
I saw a blue tinge like a halo around every thing.
These, love letters, more passion, than microfilm
Could hold – adulterate my thought, hides
More secrets, contains more sexual acts than
Your body could verify, where, your hands
Touch, pale skin and silk,
Where musk, from the broken vial,
Breathe the perfume on a throat.
-I am a room in a disused brothel
A red candle stolen from a church,
The edges of the atrium,
A wound, where
All love ends and begins again.
A stone jar of dreams, tiny scar on a heart,
The face of a man, foreign postcard,
Souvenir maps wrapped old feelings
-I am a vault where this blueness stays, the ink,
Line of thread, embroiderer of parchment,
Inker of veins.
Whose crayons, red and blue
Bruising each perfect soul
Until the color was evidence
Life has its way with us, against
Your body Lover, we went down
Land falling from our skin
Sand falling from your hair.
Passing the headland,
Aotearoa, your sky made me weep,
Even as obscure, clouded places
A flap of wind, flax painted kite
even as my breath catching, tearing
you away.
First Opera of Words
Fr. III
It is a birth of dream, a child of our own possession
Everything, this sacrifice, not safe from your snares
And wires, in breach of the truth.
But who promises her bread, a crust
Whose ink in his hand, quenched the truth?
Drown the dream carefully
Leave nothing, forget her
Bequeath her nothing
But one day she will be returned to you
In this month of erasure…she resembles you
She was wrapped in rags.
While the rag world is the rag world
Yet perfumed cloth with oranges-flower scent
But then oily stain of bitterest olives
Then who is left to sweep up dead stones,
That penetrate white to her bone
Hold her close, until the rocks of her spine
Belong to your past.
Let my name be traveler, first rains
And you shall be brought down,
and shall speak out of the ground
A voice as low as dust
Shouting out of stone
We came to you for a little resurrection
When you needed complete obedience
The terrible repetitious history
We had none to give.
In the crush of law in the chain of time
We had nothing to obey.
I will find something in this stony rubbish,
The folded tent unbinding
(come inside and stay) and I will show you
What is left after the losses, the remains of life, we keep.
Maternal Ghost
She is lying there in the interval
waiting and even if I pressed the clover
or a flower between the book and
the room, air is measured
in lilac and violets
wind in the velvet,
smells of her perfume
the purple tracery on the green stem
the web in narrow splinters.
She is bone and wool
treasure casket purple cloak
rag and calcified relic
of a resurrected saint
to hear your voice as solitary choir
to see your face smiling at the window
the halo. Highly glazed. It shines as if
I held a candle to it.
Even the sound. When she dropped a coin in the box.
Disappeared. One does not imagine this.
