Death
Into that strange sky where
the past cries eternally, what drop
of tear would stay here on the earth?
They say the hummingbird dies
each night, dressed in alabaster
and the woman too cupping him
in her hands, soft woes for centuries
after – the muse’s muse who folds
her robes into a poem like a flower
losing itself to winter and the
pain of all colours that chap the palms
of bone white hands. What drop
of honest blood would claim hereafter
the rivers of veins that give the earth
nails to claw, animals to dig, trees
to fight and open their areoles to
that strange sky where a mist gathers
in the shallows that cry from the unborn?
On the back of an open moth’s wing
the world is drawn - when she closes,
it closes, when she opens, it opens –
each day and night, like dust,
just dust.
Harry O'Neill
Sat 14th Jun 2014 00:47
I would be upset if my attempt to `suss out` for myself what it was about Marianne`s poem that affected me should be read as an approval of `difficult` poetry.
Unlike those poets who live in their own private unintelligible metaphysical world her figures have a hard to get at- but ultimately intelligible - allusion to what she is `saying` in this poem.
However, in my opinion, she does herself a
disservice by the way she puts together those
figures...Readers will take a little trouble to understand, but the poet should come some way to meet them.