There decays, forgotten among more meaningless things, And casual things, a delicate, once well-fitting decor, The deliberate clear image Of a meditated life among 5 More mediated images that sting Because they are ineffectual, half-changed From what they were. A rare, stiff-legged porcelain Charger charges riderless Over a snow globe that holds 10 The firelit sad face of a girl, and breaks. A sheaf of hooves display against a wall like a shadow Their shattered sounds for some more ghostly auditor. Perhaps the ghost of some primal past mother comes Ageless in argosy, whose coiled hands unwind a rope 15 Hidden on a dock. Chanting in close-eyed ecstasy, His great grey eyes half-lidded, drugged by time, Her lizard tongue uncorked, lazy against cracked lips, and glistening, Her words are silken scarves 20 That cling, and her red-gold feet are stamping In tribal dance that imitates The cat-footed grace of dying. She speaks, whose hollow whispering might seem Vastly mistaken to the image-making, image-bearing mind. 25 Because I am old I think I know of death And the last ending. Unless all breathing breaks unasked From a tossed sea-shell by the Nile In empty echoing, or encapsulated image, There must be a source for life 30 And death and the eternal In-between meanderings. Watching casts of stars or lonely women glittering As they drown, cloistered to the dark waters like scarves Thrown down from desert Egypt 35 In African simplicity, I hear Desolate yeowl of attic-cat, self-fallen, scatter inheritance. At last a lion's breath commands a lion's body.
From the collection "Divine Revolt"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.