Holy Heathen Rhapsody Read Online Free

and relinquishes all.
    This text seems right for a rushing
    river full of gullets and bones, for its multiple
    voices ring also with lies and devotions
    that pitch and fall and swallow one another,
    constantly present, suddenly lost,
    all inseparable.



COURTING WITH FINESSE, MY DOUBLE ORANGE POPPY
    I know I said I loved you,
    but I was drunk at the time
    on citrus ice and marmalade.
    I know I caressed the open places
    where your petals join together
    at the stem, but you just happened
    to lean my way in the breeze,
    into my hands already cupped
    and blossom-shaped.
    Maybe it seemed to you I reflected
    the color of your grace in my eyes,
    but it was evening, remember, the sun
    sinking, and I was looking west.
    And perhaps I did sing to you
    of unfolding fringed petals
    delicately crumpled first in the bud,
    but it was really the unwinding
    orange nub of the early evening
    moon that I described with such rapture.
    And if I did whisper to you once
    of damp stamens, mesmerizing leaves
    deeply lobed, spicy oil pockets
    of seeds, those were merely facts,
    a dull litany I recited in my sleep.
    I don’t know how you could think
    I came of my own accord to lie
    beside you all night in your sway.
    I was only your imagination.
    Don’t ever believe I wrote these words
    for you:
In those tangled, moist woods
    and thickets where I live, there grows
    native and rooted deep in the desire
    I myself invent, a divinely aloof,
    double orange glory.

ROMANCE
    In love with the body, especially when
    it dances in love with its own dance as it toes
    and taps . . . flickers, creepers, chickadees
    around a tree trunk, a click beetle in a flipping
    somersault, the soft-shoe swish and sway
    of the chee and feather grasses, the lissom uvas;
    in love with the melding of the body,
    especially when it languishes in the surf
    of its own sleep . . . the belly slump of a leopard
    stretched high on a branch, camouflaged,
    leaf and fur, the tight sleep of a tumblebug egg
    in its buried pod of dung, the man in a backyard
    hammock slowly rocking with the slowly
    rolling sun through evening shadows;
    (so floats the sea otter on its back, bobbing
    with the rocking sea, so bobs the gelatinous
    umbrella and stinging strings of the jellyfish,
    jelly and sting being the design and event
    of the sea’s own rolling body)
    especially when the perfumes of a vigorous
    body rocking, sleeping in the sun’s evening
    rest are of the salt of the sea, his body itself
    being the salt of the earth, in love
    with my mouth when the salt is tasted;
    no ardor surpasses a body on the hunt,
    halting abruptly, one foot lifted above the snow,
    poised, as intent as frozen air, eyes as pure
    and sharp as ice, then the bolt—the élancé—
    beat and soul wholly in pursuit—the sail—
    supreme the contact—most foreign, most
    familiar, on the far edge of the horizon.

ROCKING AND RESURRECTION
    Some people, injured or frightened, rock
    all day long holding their knees to their chins,
    on sofas and wooden benches, in beds,
    on bare floors, rocking as if they believed
    they were trained riders on pearl stallions,
    or golden-seeded stem-swingers in autumn
    fields, or, with their eyes closed, believed
    they were flowing purple flags in a sun-
    warmed wind, convinced and comforted
    by their own rocking.
    Mary rocked a grown man dead in her arms,
    and Lear swayed with Cordelia-gone held
    close to his heart. Did they believe this old
    motion performed long enough might
    bring breath back? Or did they rock to ease
    the loved, lapsing body into the earth?
    Or did they rock to give their spines
    and breasts a healing expression of grief?
    Lullabies, cradles, rocking chairs, hammocks,
    long rope swings—a need of the body seems
    calmed by this motion of surge and release.
    There’s someone I want to take into my arms
    tonight and rock, his head on my shoulder,
    his lips at my throat. I want to move with him
    easily, as moonlight rolls and