How has withered
winter ebony branch
become bursting wand
of bloomed blanche?
Though the kisses
of the sky's rain dance
and the wand of Sun's
most casual glance
They find no longer room
do the bursting blooms
in the branches' cocoon
Butterflies of purple
redbud
burst out of their tombs
(to J Dunlap)
PAINSIRED MIRACLES
Because the British could
not own the land
they made in Kashmir
lovely houseboats
which on the mountain mirror
lakes do float.
Because of the slaughterhouse
of the 2nd World War
women were freed
from household scars*
Author's Notes/Comments:
Thank you to Matthew Arnold for the phrase 'moonblanched land' and
thank you to Tennessee
Williams for rhyming
blanche and branch
in "Night Of The Iguana"
a play in which Richard
Burton or another actor
releases an iguana
tied for slaughter
This is the poem
How calmly does the olive branch
observe the sky begin to blanch,
without a cry, without a prayer,
with no betrayal of despair!
Sometime
while night obscures the tree
the zenith of its life will be
gone, past, forever.
And from thence
a second history will commence
a chronicle no longer gold
a bargaining with mist and mold
and finally
the broken stem,
the plummeting to earth, and then
an intercourse not well designed
for beings of a golden kind,
whose native green must arch above
the earth's obscene corrupting love,
and still
the ripe fruit and the branch
observe the sky begin to blanch
without a cry, without a prayer,
with no betrayal of despair.
Oh courage! could you not as well
select a second place to dwell,
not onl in that golden tree
but in the frightened heart of me?
