Poetry

Opening my eyes doesn’t feel like opening my eyes.Everything arrives as dazzling darkness with patches of light.Cloud, fog, haziness caught inside my sight.

Opening my eyes didn’t work, so I had to pry and cry.My eyes woke in the city of a water-colored sky.The sky, a wet sheet of A4, held its water high.As if underwater, light strained through my bare eyes.

Not opening my eyes meant opening my ears.The wave of the city washed against my window and appearedas vehicles of the sea: buses buzzing, cars skidding,engines hissing bubbles of breath near.

I didn’t open my eyes.Still, an orchestra of wheels and eels behind my eyes.

Knee-high hedges hunched against the curband a faint smell of herbs–mushed green someone’s grandmother pressedinto poultice, as her grandmother before her,ancient remedy

The wise spirit embodied in aromaswishes past me,unlike us,never oblivious

I breathe in a little of their spelland suddenly it pricksthe back of my dusted-over nose,tickling a sleeping sensation– I knowI know this memory of green

I gathered once around this green, around a flickering redmyths and fables passed from mouth to mouthfirelight merged our shadows into one body,bare feet lifted dust with every drumbeat,children circled laughing and jumping beneath the first starsmy anthropos, stirred holy and nervous.

The cage of my ribs opens each dawn for another chickWholeheartedly it waits, a snare for the day's little chick.

She flew into my cage, chirping joy and love lyricsI noticed her chest softly pressing on my cheek.

Deep below, her heart beat lub-dub  then fasterlub-dub, lub-dub, luv-dumb.  She is dumb to love me, my chick.

She traced circles on my wrist and called the pulse reassuringNeither of us noticed another creature listening – chik, chik.

A greying rat slipped quietly beneath my ribs,Its furry tail threading along my lungs while you still sang, my chick.

Red eyes drank where your whisper entered the arteriesIt fed on love. Soon my heartbeat answered only chik-chik instead of you.

Whiskers combed my ventricles like reeds beside a creekTiny paws …. crawled every chamber where your voice would roost, my chick.

You kissed my chest believing something gentle lived insideYou nurtured love; I nurtured the creature that destroys it, sorry my chick.

Who taught this little rat to masquerade as heartbeats?It mistook every bird for hunger: another chick….another chick.

Forgive the girl that chose my ribs as her cageIt never knew what else had nested there.

Latin

1. Sole oriente, omnes viri oppidi in agros adveniunt, terram arantes ut hordeum, uvas, olivasque colant.
2. Cum etiam boves verbera ferentes ordine agrum arantes, equique onera huc illuc portantes laborarent, Fabius agricola ignavus vix tandem adveniebat.
3. Eum, quem ceteri agricolae in agris raro conspiciebant, sub arbore saepe iacentem atque mulsum libenter bibentem facile videri poterat.
4. Non tam labore quam otio delectabatur.
5. Erat autem quidam agricola, qui a sociis laudaretur et a pueris per vias caneretur, cuius nomen nemo sciret, industriam tamen disciplinamque animumque terris colendis deditus erat.
6. At Fabius ignavia caecatus mirabatur cur ille a conviviis conventibusque se abstineret atque parvo agro contentus esset , eum sine animo virorum esse putans.
7. Subito nuntii, armis induti non paenulis, ex via equis celeriter advenerunt longa.
8. Nuntii genibus flexis supplices dixerunt vocemus et virum pietatis et temperantiae ad dictaturam, ut Romam ab exitio servemus.
9. His verbis audits, ille agricola paulatim caput adhuc pulvere opertum sustulit.
10. Nomen eius tandem prolatum est Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus.
11. Fabius percussus intellexit erravisse eum quem antea contempersat verum virtutis virum fuisse; ita virtus Cincinnati non solum rem
12. publicam sed etiam Fabium ipsum servavit.

English Translation

1. With the sun rising, all the men of the town come into the fields, ploughing the land in so that they may cultivate barley, grapes, and olives.
2. When even the oxen, bearing beatings, were working, ploughing the field in order, and the horses were working, carrying loads here and there, Fabius, a lazy farmer, was scarcely at last arriving.
3. He, whom the other farmers rarely caught sight of in the fields, could easily be seen often lying under a tree and gladly drinking honeyed wine.
4. He was delighted not so much by work as by leisure.
5. However, there was a certain farmer, who was praised by his companions and was sung about by boys along the street, whose name no one knew, but having been devoted in respect to his industry, discipline, and spirit for the lands to be cultivated.
6. But Fabius, blinded by laziness, was wondering why that man kept himself away from banquets and gatherings, and was content with a small farm, thinking that he was without the spirit of men.
7. Suddenly, the messengers, clothed in arms not in cloaks, swiftly arrived on horseback from the long road:
8. The messengers, with knees bent as supplicants, said “Let us call a man of duty and self-control to the dictatorship, so that we may save Rome from destruction.”
9. With these words having been heard, that farmer slowly raised his head, still covered with dust.
10. His name at last was brought forth, Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus.
11. Fabius, struck, understood that he had made mistakes, that the man whom he had previously despised had been a true man of virtue; and so the virtue of Cincinnatus saved not only the state but also Fabius himself

A closet of sharp ties,is my father's domain.

Square-shouldered suits huddle,two pairs of hard shoes on the cold floorone slightly worn at the heel.

Half-zipped briefcase glimpsed beyondtall stacks of books.His world folds everythinginto flavourless documents,piles of bills,all smell faint of ink.

But my world unfurls,a rebellious colour,soft at the collar,afraid of the chill here.

More than paper,his day is folded tight,creased along the right,inside those forms.

Have you heard his cello?Cantata BWV 156: AriosoThe way it moves through a room like weather,like God clearing his throat.

His virtuoso was my Othellojealous of every hour I wasn't his,every note I wrote for myselfbefore he filled my mouth with his instead.

Our house was a bordello,always loud and someone wanting,thirteen children, but myself burning.

Every night, with dimly lit candlethat naked punchinellobelieving that the whole worldwas a stage built for his wordand feet, and I was simply the floor.

Such a mellow fellow, they said.Such a man. Such a gift to the world.Johann Sebastian.The greatest musician.

And when he died,that fellowthe only one at my elbowleft me as a pathetic widow.I was no longer a musician,a composer, the highest-paying songwriter.

Just a widow.Just the hollow echowhen his cello ends.

OH!Ohoh.