O holy languid Dawn,
What ancient rest have
you discovered?
What great sleep
have you disturbed?
Hidden away in the
bowels of the earth?
What light withers
and returns
To vanish before
the noontime?
To awaken the
reeds and shatter the dew?
Greeted by
birdsong and the weeping of women?
Now the cattails
swing their heavy heads
Like drunken girls
in a bathroom mirror,
While knots of
snakes writhe between the grasses
Like half-conscious
children on the floor of a kitchen.
And the raveled
limbs of trees release their dormant cry
And cast off the
muzzle of their frigid burden.
A spotted fawn
glowing stands alert
To anticipate the
arrival
Muted as an echo
from distant time:
The world to come
calling as a whisper
Of half heard forgotten
language
From a mysterious
dark and foreign tongue;
An image upon an
image,
A promise clambered
for in the half-light
Spreading leisurely
across the canvas
To at last take
its seat and be revealed in us.
