88

when the season comes, the door opens
shall we find this without the help
of our own hands?
the books fall like a waterfall over the mind
and our ceilings apologize to the stars
for their blindness
this is a quiet house
the sounds within it are like the movement
of a foetus when night has settled
the dripping tap, the buzzing sill,
the screeching cobs of corn against
the sky's dark board, we all crawl inside
the tribe's womb and wait

 

89

a gape
was it what you tore with your own hands?
your literary voice?
what you spoke made palpable despite softness,
loudness
was it what you refused?
they, from the other side, who we reflect,
say that the god refuses, that god's descendants refuse,
that the ocean refuses, that sleep
refuses the mind unless it creeps
was it the galaxy
spinning like a fired starfish to make us edgy and doubtful?

 

90

cut the world in half with the knife
inserted right between my feet; open my hand
and find the frozen earth; plant the apple
seeds of my fingertips inside the inner walls
of my chest and, delicate, thin, watch
the new world grow from there, pulsing like
the folded-back lips of a pap-hawk
suckling at the breast of the spider, ant,
bones of the shaking chest of the cosmos;
tell only the truth and grieve only for such
cause as that, think, burning, swearing

 

91

you kiss and you blow through the trees
far-off from these lips and whistling perpetually,
lightly, in a wind occupying a world absent because infinitely
detectable, rising and falling, above and below your ear
like a stream flowing, purely of light but sounding
like water through tall reeds and sounding like many breezes
dripping through leaves and washing against the curtains
before falling again through a window and leaving you here
with only your mouth, its small breath and locked door
did you notice me standing there in my boots and coat

 

92

knocking, tapping? think back, you always saw the lover moving
and the thumping heart propelling that and more, if you look
at what you've done I'm sure you'll admit it hasn't transferred
to the page – to be happy you must be faithful to happiness
but you kept changing your shape, any beast would do,
and throwing fruit, shell, rock, did you think I lived for you,
what is your love but this war with reality, borne down upon
by a featureless stone horse, mountainous, blood the slave
of its veins and high-black scream?

 

93

you sit under a tree with your blood too old
to make anything work, you sit under a tree one day,
one day unusually, and in your chest there's an electrical
fire that's as tight as pain, breath being heaved with the effort
it takes to sink the same bit of earth you've always
lived on, cliff passes by, petals lift up like hips
in desire, only once the sun lifts the clouds onto
a painter's canvas, gold, like a new corpse

 

94

incarnate labouring longing
I can already hear you telling them,
it's your imagination
one of the writers separates each sentence
and in those spaces
where the darkness is kept dark
I can hear your breath

 

95

we breathe not for oxygen but to expel the air we have husked
to dirty ghost; we are under the black river where we breathe
despite being land animals; this is how they put things in packets
force them in; when I try to speak it feels like having my face
ripped off; the words float up to the surface; language blossoms
opening; but I can't hear what I'm saying; I'm under the black river

 

96

what is sour? the body after it has been in the mouth
for the space of a night, the sweet lemon rolled
in your tongue and unfurling like a daffodil?
flicking over and over the fine skin of a coffee bean, sweetness
growing spontaneously in the sacred dwelling of the mouth

 

97

along the way, not just the dark quotes,
the chipped off light of utterance unmeant and skint,
but all the regions of the tongue drawn by surfaces
the tongue slides: can I let what I have go – into us?

 

98

call me, when you need to barely touch; every
visitor, the taste of a whispered world; every
path is a furrow; find us, the uncomfortable stars

 

99

and not simply time but the kind of second that passes
only because of words – how concerned with effects…

 

100

ice follows water follows

 

Copyright © M T C Cronin, 2003

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