The Tree With All The Body's Roses
"She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves..."
Wallace Stevens, The Idea of Order at Key West
The world has parrots.
I'm looking for a songbird
in the jade well of deep forest,
a voice to bucket it up.
Behind the plastic house
I found blue wildflowers,
watched their petals transmogrify
to wings on seeds
blowing like the freckles of stardust
mottling the
Milky Way,
to daisy-face another autumn day
to daisy-face another autumn day
in indigo beyond the swirling suns.
All this because a thousand years ago
All this because a thousand years ago
in banished nights the apprentice read to me
words of a Northern heart washed up
on a bleach and dazzle of tropic sand;
to me, his caryatid, words for a girl
to me, his caryatid, words for a girl
he loved I'd never be, that
magic could not make me,
magic could not make me,
to sing beyond the genius of the sea.
Yet she brought me here, that girl,
a statue suddenly animate,
a statue suddenly animate,
to dig and weed the heart's ground
beyond the ocean drench of chemical hope,
beyond the ocean drench of chemical hope,
past youth itself in its naked greed, til at last a tree
would raise the mind's branch on which
a bird could land and sing
of all the body's roses we
never see.
~October 2017
Your posts must contain at least one magical element and some sort of love(dark love, sweet love, ridiculous love, terrifying love, insane love, gentle love…)..."
(I hope the young love and transmogrifying magic here is enough, even if it didn't exactly work as planned by the magician's apprentice. )
Rosa 'Pat Austen' ©joyannjones 2013
Clouds in Finland, by Konrad Kryzyzanowski Fair Use
I am going to have to re-read this a couple of times to get the details, but the feeling just washed over me at the end, and needs no addendum. I feel as if I have spent time in a lush jungle, but one which is oddly partitioned--extra for this one, scraps for the other. Moreover, the entire thing seems dream-like and soap-bubble fragile; all except for the emotional truth at its core. And, without the caryatid, even the most beautiful temple would fall.
ReplyDeleteThis is so incredibly beautiful!💞 Especially love; "to dig and weed, to till the heart's ground beyond the ocean drench of chemical hope, past youth itself in its naked greed, till at last a tree would raise the mind's branch on which a bird could land and sing of all the body's roses we never see."💞
ReplyDeleteThere is no deeper love or stronger magic that the energy found in transformation and giving. To be changed (or to accept the change) in order to offer a place, a space... to something unseeing is a miracle of conviction, the sort of wishing that celebrates (and infuses the world with its delights) even before it is granted. It is magic we make--the best, the only one that truly works... and that often loves us back.
ReplyDeleteI love the ending best, the promise...
Thanks so much for adding your transmogrifying magic to my October's Heart-Bits.
Taking unrequited and using it to create beauty...what a marvellously positive thing for the world. XXX
ReplyDeleteOh I love it! So beautiful!
ReplyDeleteblessings
~*~
Heart and art, the impossible pairing, so finely accomplished here ... Beyond parroting, there is a jade well, there must must be, we heard it all those years ago ... Those words for a girl he was approximating too, albeit so finely that even he knew it more than dirtying silence. Down a long hall here, at the end of that venereal sound, lush perhaps though not divine (that would cheapen it). The lines on which this poem perches has such a vantage on the music it so yearns for -- what Stevens did too, for that genius beyond the sea ... So what if the the thing we loved fell so hard? We heard it, falling ... Great stuff. Happy All Hallows, Hedge.
ReplyDeleteYour poetry has left me transformed.. and your words have spun imagery within me full of awe and bewilderment! Your writing is exquisite and the painting is deeply gorgeous.
ReplyDeleteVictoria
The apprentice read the truth to you and infused her words into your soul. Such beautiful writing. Such deep understanding. And awesome art!
ReplyDelete