Mirror | rorriM

Lovers:

even in the desert’s blinding light

we make out halting darkness
a foreign shout:
are they us? Are we them?

Guilt burns a hole
in La Posa’s hand

as she tries to escape her supernatural wedding:
through the hole milky sky
yellow-rimmed slopes white filter of bird’s wing your lover’s skin
is turning yellow.

Shepherd who went to the spring

shepherd who came from the spring
remove the evil eye
from the one you put it on.
Virgin Mary
you with your hand and I with mine.

Far-off a door slams against the intelligence of light:
mother of the sorrows

who’s the third in our bed
who’s lying in the run-off,
dusty as a cabra?

Stones fall against each other as you walk
(maybe you’re counting them)
maybe they clap their wings together castanetas of myrtle branches
a-a-a-a

who’s your new squeeze

who’s that under your skin who’s riding you ragged getting a feel for you
who slipped her wedding rocks under our feet?

In the desert outside is inside

the hot stone dust in your nose and
what must be said

scratch-scratching till the screen weeps blood:

I was in the hospital.

This, they must take out.
And this, perhaps.
Also…

motionless day turning

darkness of your eye turning yellow
doors wires closures
my ignorance which won’t look you in the eye
the desert never looks you in the eye
at the ordinary name of illness its polished

general ward.

But the body is inconsolable

this is the burnt mouth the closed eye
everything passes through

a dry place on your skin

can I touch it?
Putting my hand into the wound of presence
because I don’t doubt
though this truth was born lying

an ulcer in a clear sky
(only you were breathless. You knew
in the honeycomb of your cells)

clear as skin

presence multiplies burning itself under our feet

a dry wind

light cut open explodes black
blades along the mountain:

who will cut you?

Dark slopes of what-must-be-done.

Of the twelve-fold choruses
I can tell you five,
five for the holy ulcers,

six for the night candles:
of the twelve times over
eight for the joys we don’t understand.
Of the twelve-fold mysteries
I tell you nine,
nine for the nine months’ waiting

two for the figures in a burning valley.

Somewhere below is a town branching with lindens
streets and clinics
in the shadow of the mountains
curtains, tubes, the closed figure of a man

whose turn it is to lie down.

In the desert black light bleaches the scorpion
mark of love.

Two figures in a desert.