Verses/Curses
Last night in Penestanan // Gamelan
strikes bronze and sounds of competition,
jumping (on) and fending (off) the night
time, momentum tops the kendang and
recedes, then tries again (again) elaboration
of champaca smoke on taught skin
low beats call up shining
density from darkness (Bima’s
laughing) and his pupils
follow moths at
lantern light
frenzy
dancing
Through it all, he promises to wait.
The storm has passed. He opens,
and she puts her face against the
fragile thing. Knowledge is there,
of the falling (apart), and the
passing away of something loved.
Skin palm sugar brown, limb narrow,
face is wonder-young, the scars
and creases deepening into
pools of brave obsidian,
and nothing else is worth a thought.
Hair, like mermaid horses riding,
silver-black and torn by wind
and wild waves, is soft. She cannot
breathe for hiding in it, wishing
most of all to go with it,
dissolving, holding, as to life,
to leaving. Every wanting cell
rehearses promise breaking.
Every metaphor about the moon
(is)
also a metaphor about the sun.
And a metaphor about a star.
(And about ocean, and about
)…(
the crab who lives there.)
Blue is the moon in her transparency,
And dark the sky, when she looks to the star
Without whom we would all be rock. We would
Be third person, un-personed remainder
After love, with unbound freedom, to scream
Anything and go unheard, unspoken.
So, blue becomes the face of unrequited
Silence. Earth, displaced from selfhood, touches
That, the final leaving off, so that it
Might grow conceivable. And that being
It, empty of form, pure as blue, still as
Clear water, shows her, heavenly, a home.
Indifference remains unwed, yet breaks
Open in the absolute reflection.