SE0073-01 Mitchell, L. - Six Poems for Piano PREVIEW

TABLE

THE PEARL OF PALESTINE

Then rose Jerusalem from the mucus mire, as clover sprig beneath the gait of Man. Broken teeth of tethered stone, magenta weeping on the night; and crested hoopoe sprawls a glossy plume and weaves a drunken trail of fright.

A jasmine moon upon the dangled string; blinks the morning, coy to blush.

From Cerberus in the catacomb to Ingeborg pining at her loom. There, drenched in citrus hush of prayer, chloroforms the twilight air to mourn. Half sunken, half devoured, kneels the pearl of Palestine. And Helios sheds his gown of sloe, and grips the Earth all gauntlet gold, awash with music ringing.

A LOVE LIKE MAYFLY HATCHING

The years they turn beneath the sun, the ebbing sun of eons born, and at every quarter the fingerprints of God! Smooth as silk is love; the ethereal litany; a weight the sword of Damocles at times of shadow lengthened. Neither trade the diamond moments that sear the skin, or stroke the fragile heart, for stone or jewel beneath Earth's trembling mantel. I am your sheepfold from the angered storm, the guide in the descending mist, the dreamer - too in dream - that leans towards you yearning… sinless as the mayfly hatching that drifts in air when day has dusked.

THE SUMMER EYE OF MITHRAS

Primrose and honeysuckle droop upon the world, mild wind wafts in palmy days… the blanched blossom sprinkled thick the haze, all amethyst, puce in milk and gold. And winks the summer eye of Mithras, harsh upon the plough.

Gaia, crouching, quakes the velvet gown of chlorophyll, summoning the eloquent Earth to prayer.

THE LIGHT THAT FEEDS THE WORLD

The light that fed the world was bleeding drops of incarnadine-gore on oak. Across the chasm lies Eden's dreaming where stirred the swan-white wings that woke. As sinew stretched across a bow, silent the cock that thricely crowed, and the garden of guilt? A fresco awash with shadow all a chiffon blue, breathed a confession with an oblique sigh, like the hoot of a wood-owl's lullaby, a wretched, jinxed baptismal name: Gethsemane, the garden of eternal shame.

Like a ladle dipped into the sun, dripped like honey, the purple eye of Raphael… thick as mucus on unblemished palm.

In the palace of eternal light, the mustering angel hordes took flight, and Michael crouched before the throne with a sword of Abyssinian bone. A cloud of milky oyster-gray, Shekinah's silver-scented spray, wafting through the sanctum, swirled away, across the white glazed marble floor, defying geometric law, like phosphorus on a Mycenaean shore to wither where it lay.

THE REAPER CAME CALLING

Rejection & death, both have been grim faces at my window… the anvil of lead across clavicle.

The Reaper came calling, the jester caped in melted clay, the froth blower drunk amid the moldering hay, the dead beetle upon the pheasant carcass strewn about the way.

At the juncture of Mars it rested, poised… in that atom of time under a claw of ice… plucked bone from pocket and cast the dice… that flashed in moon, on crutches rolled to the root of the beggar lice.

Eye pierced shadow mid the fascia eaves… it spied the sleeping, naked form, and swifter than a meteor swarmor owl to mouse...or hawk to harewas seated thence in the wicker chair, like a whipped pup half-forlorn.

With fever, drenched, I shook as swine, doomed at the slaughter-house door… and drank the unpredictable wine of dream… the hooked pike floundering in the fluid stream… and woke to spy the empty chair, the bruise of life, the black crow's blare, the crawl of time, the sting of love lost.

Rejection & death, both have been grim faces at my window… the anvil of lead across clavicle.

GOD OF THE 4 WINDS

Once, beloved, my lust for you was as of Bacchus born. A desired ovum, a hymn for Baal. Where now the blood-red passion that bore me through woeful spans of time, on Pegasus wings, across life's violet vault of Heaven?

Did you not see, as I, Cupid's bow decaying in the dust? Wrapped in a shroud of gossamer, where Venus mourned her son in floral gown, whispering at the body: "Breathe beloved. Breathe!"

Yet never more to breathe, not upon this eager sphinx again. Do you not recall an eastern sun, a massing yolk of gold, crawling like a wounded phoenix above a broken-dreamed horizon? Do you remember not the funeral pyre, heralding the death of lust, the charred bones upon the altar, the ash upon the stone? And beloved, sadness is but the lost you youth in man, and lust as of Bacchus born, who sings to the past… in soft words drenched with madness. My ship broke upon the rocks but now the mast is straight again, the torn sail resown.

God of the 4 winds stroke a wounded heart, once more, across the salty deeps of love and life.

III. The summer eye of Mithras

VI. God of the 4 Winds