Poems: Songlines Terry Hauptman

Poems by Terry Linda Hauptmann∗

Sarajevo 1993 For Rosemarie Basic

Ic hore, sic nennen das Leben die einzige zuflucht I hear that they call life our only refuge Paul Celan

It is either the beginning or the end of the world, and the choice is ourselves or nothing. Carolyn Forche

I called out to the living but the dead responded. Giuseppe Tournatore

Waiting for the war to end

You a mixed-blood with the mixed bloods All mixed-blood Serbs and Croats Where the dead light candies with the dead Looking for a way out of history.

"Can you believe I have no country?" "Can you believe what I saw Dipping into death at the blackmarket?"

A wound in that pulse of wind An old woman in the ruins Begging for life So many bodies in mass graves Where the dead are buried in playgrounds Searching for life.

∗ Terry Linda Hauptmann is a poet and painter, whose travels have taken her to many spiritual centers of the world, but her home is Vermont. She exhibits her paintings nationally and reads her poetry in performance rhapsodically. Her poems have appeared in Since Heavenly Muse!, Contact 11, Southern Review, Icon, Blue Mesa, High Plains Review, and other publications. Her art, displayed here alongside her poetry has appeared in many galleries (originals are in color).

"I called out to the living, But the dead responded."

Whilst clogs carry A dead man's legbone Across silent spaces Dust and ash This blue gash of winter.

Figure 1 – Dance (woodcut) by Terry Linda Hauptman

THE MURMUR OF THE SILENCE For Meheen

Whose fire within fire carries her like a bird on the dark side of the beach

In Lurs Iran

You trade chicken’s eggs for books In the theater of the walking dead Your mother shouting "Sarakhur" "you have killed your father" Outcast Cursed

Hated one

How the pomegranate trees with there "zereshk" deep dark burgundy color drip blood "You have to touch the fallen and go down and fall until you stand up"*

You have to fall fall down into the corpses before you can rise rise up again.

And now listening to Hossein Alizadeh's music "The Echo of the Sun" The wind whips everything away Lightning and thunder The Disharmony of Fate Talking with God in the hummingbird winds Deep with inner darkness Quick with inner light Wise people get scared.

*Ahmad Shamloo Iranian poet

THE SERPENT MOUNDS* Adams County, Ohio

I turn left when the music turns right But it still sings through me Haunting the Serpent Mounds With threats of condominiums Built on the already excavated Bones of the Adena forgotten.

If dreams are our fears This must be stopped This must be stopped.

I am chased by the spirits of destruction Lightning and winds Calling to the disappeared

Hot flash of light Crossing open space As the serpent sheds its skin Swallowing the egg of centuries In a moment's roar

And I taste the living embers In this century of the living Drawing you near

Where I see the destruction of a whole people From the veils of fear Watching my own small death enter Screaming wordlessly.

*The Serpent Mounds were built for ceremonial purposes by the Adena People in 11th century A. D.

It is also said the Serpent Mounds were built by the Adena Tribe 100 B.C. and 700 A.D.

The Serpent Mounds consist of an effigy mound and three burial mounds. The serpentine effigy, nearly a quarter mile long represents a gigantic serpent in the act of uncoiling. The oval wall of earth at the head represents the serpent's open jaws. The length of the effigy proper following the convolutions and the coils of the tail is 1,254 feet.

Figure 2—Day of the Dead (woodcut) by Terry Linda Hauptman

SONGS OF SHEBA For Barbara Clark

"We shall not escape Hell my passionate sisters" Marina Tsvetaeva

"in the sea-depths of music we voyage together' Odysseus Elytis

Tonight the watchers of the Red Sea Call us back to ourselves Talking to each other Scapegoat to scapegoat "Land for Peace" is a cry away Goddess of Birth and Death Make it happen. Who listens in the dark?

Southeast of Santa Fe Shadows edge Galisteo's ancient sea We climb cordillera clouds of dust Our Songs of Sheba swept away By mesa birds and turquoise winds Cries rise from the radioactive highway

What secret of this century Turns our back on ourselves Listening to the Deep Voice of the Desert Mothers Singing in the Canyons del Muerto The Ruins of Death?

Night hips lean on the ancient coral reefs of Tijeras "Who is coming up from the desert Leaning on her Beloved" Lost in the Song of Songs Listening to the lapis jazz of dawn Ghosting the desert with its thunder?

Speak to me from the sea-depths Of your Shulamite pulse Or your Spider-rock hips Entering this red cliff house of words Memory of fire in the cave of rain Where I speak with my hands

While you sing your siren-sea In the burnt dusk of the dead year Who listens in the dark?

Figure 3—Archeology of Consciousness (woodcut) by Terry Linda Hauptman

BLOODSTAR

"For months now the sky has been red" Mary McAnally

For months now the sky has been red

Death rattle echoing Anil de Muerto Day of the Dead Madre de Dios with knife at her hip Marauding through the radioactive desert The Sangre de Cristos

The flint hills give away the thundah

Spark dolorosa Firepepper spittle that calls me back branching Acequia Madre Mother Ditch Queen lda’s zydeco breastplate Hugging adobe hips

Now that I have lost you

Like Goya's firing squad

Or Lorca's death For months now the sky has been red.

My soul knows enough is never enough

And seeks you in every fermenting flame Pinion cedar sage Broomweed yellow chamisa hoop of wind

Children in the streets gather glitter dust

For the feast of the peasants Shimmying to "Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers" Rubbed down by the spirits And the green night river runs backwards To watchbirds on the Rio Grande Blue corn white corn yellow corn Searing winds.

Santa Fe New Mexico