“And now a she-wolf came, that in her leanness
Seemed racked with every kind of greediness
(How many people she has brought to grief!)” 51


Love Song Of The Greyhound


“She mates with many creatures, and will go on
Mating with many more until the greyhound comes
And tracks her down to make her die in anguish” 102



I

Beyond the farside-
In the valley of the hound,
I awoke in predawn fog,
Stretched low, on the soft, wet ground.
Split quick the skin of heavy hog;
Gorged myself to drown impermeable sound.

That horrible blood whisper,
Residing in the head;
Filtered through a strobe fluttered image-
Of the farthest angles men seek to find.
The place the angels fled-
Where, in the withered bride’s skull,
For two, and one-half years,
I made my bed.

After the she-wolf
Had racked me,
And stretched me,
Slaughtered my facilities;
Scattered my fragments-
Left me for dead!

So I rise here, now-
My body crimson, and slogged.
I am aware of one thought,
Which stifles all sound;
As I prowl through these valleys,
Upturning logs.
Perched upon a cliff bank,
Cries ring the hard ground!
Descend to drag the bogs;
Thought residing:
I am greyhound!


II

Of the beginning,
There is little to be said;
Or, at least, little point
In it’s being said.
For had we ever
Come to the fact,
Of how, she, and I,
Came to be like that-
It could reveal little
Of where we are,
Nor much of how we got there.
(But of that beginning,
And the means of our ends.)
For it was not the beginning,
Of how we arrive here, now,
But rather the immaculate dawn,
Of doubt, and realization.
The way, day after day,
We attempt to recreate,
The one moment it arose;
To stir our minds of life’s sleep.
Before love-
The shadow of vague creation,
Set over our skins;
Dimming it’s natures,
We grip, locked within.



III

In the beginning:
We rose among the mountains,
Two solid forms, amongst the ruins
Of love’s fortunes.
Drawn together,
By some strange, symmetrical force,
Pours from every crack, and pore,
Of those stony palaces-
Founded in that dry place of disaffection,
Where ice carved layers of stone.
Millenniums displaced,
Under the stern thrush, of water compound.

She and I,
In a slow stride,
Along those endless, serpentine roads;
Of dust, and bone.
Where each pair of lovers,
Turned off, in the smoke of torchlight,
To attend respective funerals-
Gaze faceless into designated graves.

We could not see why,
They seemed so eager;
To make burnt offerings
Of themselves.

Dragged our steps
Through musts of marrow,
Stopped at every spring, and creek;
To wash our feet among dry sands-
(If there were only water
Amongst the rock)!

There, our voices were still;
Words dull, across slates that refused there echo-
Sent syllables, stumbling down a cliff bank,
To drain into dried pools, decrease across
The skin of old stone.

Unknowingly, we too had come;
To carve our name in granite plates,
To date the plague of our debates,
And clarify the confirmation,
Of our final resting place.


IV

The hunt has ended;
I am upon her.
Hunched in the bushes
Bordering a small clearing.
She is sprawled, center-
Like an admonishing pinup.

She is aware of my presence,
Still she goes on;
Defiles to sodomize
The most recent,
Of mange-ridden mutts,
She has lured to her door.

A series of simple gestures.
I erupt from the foliage;
Sounding my arrival
With a barbaric “yalp”.
A touch of my hand,
And his head comes

Clean of his neck;
Like tender flesh,
Parted for the tempered blade.
She lay back,
Propped on elbows-
Vulgar, like a tarnished prize.

Her hair matted
To her breasts, thick patched,
Drying in the noon sun;
As she licks from her skin,
His acrid stain.
I descend,

Lower myself
Into that awful
Whispering again.
Come inside her;
Like a victorious
Explorer, reclaiming

Lost alchemy.
We rise to take up
The form of beasts;
Our mouths never meet.
The body sweats-
Oil, and fire,

Over, the repeated phrase:
I am greyhound!
I AM GREYHOUND!
Like the heartbeat,
Quickening, in the body’s
Convulsive pace.

She sends her contemptuous
Moans and howls,
Through the night air;
Well into nightfall.
When birds, and squirrels,

Flee, and scurry,
To protective holds-
(They know,
The comedy is over).
Without warning,
I seize her left arm;

Drawing it back, by the wrist.
My jaws close
On her shoulder.
The wet crush of bone,
Joint buckles,
Red plush, rushes

Between my teeth.
Trails along my lips-
Falls to bead in grain dirt.
The limb comes free,
I am sent reeling-
As her hind claws

Grate my chest.
I fall to the ground,
Bawling, blood soaking
The dry soil,
With a little bitter life.
I stand to leave her,

Bleeding there.
Stumble through those woods;
Clutching my wounds,
Like small songs of memory-
Singing tiny pin notes,
Deep in the flesh of my chest.

Full well knowing:
That as the season’s scavengers,
Picked over her meat;

The summer sun,
Bleached her bones,
Scattered them to be alone!
The corpse left,
To rot, and decrease,
In that small clearing;

Among the dry drone,
Of the cicadas
Unabating psalm-

Could only be, me.


V

One should be in surprise,
Of the death love brings.
When it’s energies clutch,
And seize, the human heart;
To halt such redundancies.
Indefinable process,
Pattern of constantly new forms-
The most enigmatic of equations.

When the angels come,
To lift us from stone;
Flush time’s dust from our lungs.
Here we are gods forever,
Our image, frozen in the warm
Displacement of light,
Through stained glass.

Here the rose blooms,
In insubordinate compassion,
For this crippled, and conflicted world.
Mending it’s fractures,
In the supple fold
Of finely crafted velvet.

But do not fallow,
From this place, me.
To a house where
The air hangs wavering,
In it’s tranquil sea.

To a room, where her eye
Sits in a corner;
On a dry bone of carpet.
Flinching at my eternal
Disaffected gaze.

Where I have resuscitated
Myself amongst
The pail reflections of glass.
Stood there in that company
For endless hours.

As the smoke rises
From these old pipes,
In the hope memory,
Could afford some piece
Of forgiveness.

Where I sit up, this night,
Like all nights, waiting-
For someone’s call.
An anonymous figure,
Come to lead me through
This barren land.

I remain here,
Only to be shown:

Somewhere out that door,
Down past the walk,
Bathed in perpetual twilight.

Perhaps a short stride,
Up a winding road,
Beneath the auspicious

Shade of a redwood tree;
A worn rosebush reaches
For daylight, and longs to be seen.

* * * * *

Vast, and empty, the open sea;
Mine irich kind,
Wo wilest du?
Vast, and empty,
Mine irich kind,
Empty…