Like a flower or a sin
Ruben Dario
I
Lilies spoke for empire, a plume to wild up the horse heads.
One face turned towards the sun, the other contending with
a deep freeze in the land of goat’s milk, and brothers
shaggier than bears.
II
Revolver of stars, lakes drained to flood a sleeping neighbor,
outfoxed but for what sin, what severity of mood to warrant
eternal sleep?
Orphans turned up the odd lens, spied the laundered nest,
went looking the whereabouts of the washed-away hill.
Mead, morphine, myrhh, a mud-king haunting the ingress
lane. The day before the day before yesterday, sudden
mothers gathering their brood to breast.
III
Riot, in its elegant lines, consumed the peacetime harvest,
stripping the gloss from each layer, mirroring the method
of scythe and bale, till the much-belabored order
lay scattered, pack-ice thinning on a green sea.
Arson shone through the cumbersome body, the rich heft
diminishing as air turned sour. The territorial collar
was passed from hand to hand, dull stupefaction
like a smudge of smoke identical down the row of
weary faces.
IV
Drought widened the death-grin, stone-click on skull and
stelae, called by other names (featherhead, snake-eyes).
Two winds to collate the severed links, the broken mosaic
of music and flight. Yoke of bubbles to spoil the straight
line. Chaos came calling, with ships and names, to dine
in grim frolic till palace bedtime.
V
Old music mocked, a devil poured his naked surplus over
the temple’s swoon. One bridge left to clear, torches and
muscle to drive the wolves back, terrace the livestock within
a tier of well-wishers in battledress. A gradient’s mystery
jeered at, one corpse as unresponsive as the worn-down
next. Caution bested cowardice in the makeshift council,
wounds cataloged in the stormlight of vanished ceiling.
A wristband of fleece raised no new devils.
VI
She-male oracle, disrobed by smoke, each gesture confirmed
as static and acceptable, a cadence to overcome the sniffles.
Lords like toys bounded from the pinnacle, soared
unflinching through the asthmatic air, closed and fastened
the wrestling quarry, gutting the smooth blouse-front
with a scalpel’s lunge, polished, practiced, during long nights
of love. Trophy to bear back, eyes screened from red rapture.
VII
River fat as cotton, papering the width of under-sky.
It scrolled through embered edges, muscular and deceitful.
An exultation rose in the woods and fell dead away,
the coven complete and futureless.
Shattering hour of an inland storm, mist mad as spindle,
infesting the outskirts under cover of darkness. Traffic
over water once dense as legend, green thighs and azure
shoulder-blades to bewitch the boats.
VIII
A mole bumped upon its shadow, wary of the still water, wary
of the silent warrens. Between fresh-scooped dirt and
unaligned creepers, the clear day’s manifest disturbances.
No nest, no egg, nothing save wind’s toy. Water spiders
tapped the emerald surface, gliding the tops of reflected firs.
Clouds scarved by, creating the illusion of current on the still
pond.
IX
Tribe of dark eyes sounding the riverbed, grass confessing
a year’s worth of signs and secrets, dust at low tide, dusk’s
tares and fireflies to punctuate the crisp dell down, along,
and up.
Come upon them sleeping, come upon them in a rush, birds
flushed into quick lines of shock and sound, cleansed in a
rinse of stranger’s blood. Thunderbolt courtships free of
sweetness, free and fast as seizure, hold, and force.
X
All in a blink, sleep sealed with a bludgeon. Cranial carry-all,
a spill of confection to mark each step and wrestle, every
stride and slump. Held aside for a better view the sacred
mask fashioned of human flesh, witness to a temple
harrowed into white, villages upended in a roar of landslide
pilings, spiked gods vocal as dogs. A day’s work of
impalings, a night rattling from surrender to hope, to dawn,
skinned in grief’s raw robe.
XI
A ritual flint to separate dreams from clinging bone, the edge
wiped twice inside its brisk prayer, a triangle of linen to
kerchief the child’s wounded head. Still-wet umbilicals
flavored the chimera’s chops, a cuff on the magic ears
to hasten its supper, then to haunt the smoking fields through
which the brutes were channeled, corona of misfortune
topping the friendless herd.
The wall was prophylaxis wide and ever true.
XII
Red field turned slowly to nightblue. Watched with owlish
indifference, the retreat was a prone colossus, crawling
in its banks of dust. Three long days an affliction on the
landscape, extinction waiting at the end of the valley,
arms at first folded, then opened wide. Sandalwood and
fresh water. A pause to canonize the early birds, a spate
of gambling and scarification. Metal called in hours,
in meters, in inches, glowing nightblue.
XIII
Small foxes scattered among abandoned armor, drawn by
martial silence, murderous quiet. A conspiracy of rescue
hatched, but not in time.
Worse fell upon the noiseless fallen than these foxes, toothing
on ropes and ration bags.
A brief time since the solid shield-wall dissolved in curses and
unthinkable orders, a strain of beloved colors dividing and
incinerate, the moon’s pity like a fluttery hand to still the
mutual stream.
XIV
Sun so pale, wonders accumulating every twilight, as though
the globe were tricked into raucous charity. Splashes of
pale light drilled with pollen, columning to a height well
beyond the tag of naked eye.
A freak of shadowland glimpsed through fog, composed out of
a desperate mind, the compass needle spinning beneath humid
glass, the weather rotten from the start, a hump not a hill but
shadow.
XV
Carnation was the blistered sign to fear, branded on palms
that snatched up cudgels, flesh still smoking.
The change upon them, rough and stinging, a flattery of
flashing eyes.
Galloped from home to household, curry-comb and bridle
to steady the waverers, symbols of office in a network
of trumps. Feet barely reaching the stirrups, untended
horsetails tickling the weed-choked lanes, turfing the
nervous city into realm.
XVI
Blazing coral (aquarose, melonrose, bloodrose) ground to
powder, dazzled on damp sand, a face forming as human,
to fix as beast. How many fingers deep was the luscious
ministry? What had been barricade was soon a hive,
limed with life, fetching seed among ruins.
A monkey scribbled the illuminated margin, tokened its tail
for a raven’s perch. Gemlike, an inundated daughter
peered through the inky slit, reached up so as not to be
forgotten.
XVII
Shafts driven by candlelight, at intervals to the ciliate source,
one hammer-blow away from the dribble and gush, the
splintered catheter. Misery ran ahead, the tunneling drum
eager that earth should hollow to contain it.
XVIII
Timbers cracked in the tide’s strong pull, fear gave way to a
questioning cry, the feel of knowledge as fins cut the lilacs
into sea, patrolling to the very edge of noonday silence.
XIX
Blown cold off the fresh tack, the pare and winnow moved
casually and came alongside, as if to console the eggless
absent nest. Brook and creak and burn and stream, all
leading back to a single simple place.
XX
A quietly floating crane.
A green world, adrift in a rich haze.
Dozing principality, spread to tempt the imperfection of other,
birdless, worlds. The kissed mouth snared all who leaned
overboard, distilled fruit and saltwater, vinegar cut with
licorice, constricting each separate dream to the finer fit
which pruned and shaped, trimmed gum from resin.
The motes quavering at the feather-tips, the bird-high vantage
stripping the spires clean.