Promises
When I was first a woman,
a proto-woman, perhaps,
I fell into the sin
of promising.
A jumbled barter it was
of all I had, masks
and early roses and melodies
too simple to be songs
all, all underfoot in the
maudlin marsh of fool's dreaming
with braggarts croaking their
whisky throats like toads.
So, into the desert
hot and clean, clear and cold,
but there again I fell,
into the assassin's bed.
Every night I knew
his nerveless cunning,
slitting the throat of love
as I lay numb
listening to devils
laughing from the killing-stone,
waiting for your call to come
tenacious and startling-sweet
on limpid air
as jasmine in the abattoir;
but in the blood-pool
only sticky silence.
Now that time has taken
all the gods and fools
that made me woman,
I see with a child's eye
grateful to be lone
with meadow-wren and violets,
promises of fairies, friend of
crows and stars.
November 2022
posted for
Images: Woman with Mask, artist unknown, via internet Fair Use
Faery and Kingfisher © Jean-Baptiste Monge Fair Use
