Words beyond light

Literary Review, Wntr, 2005 by Michele Leggott

words beyond light

the gipsies forging suns and arrows in their smithies are looking after us along the black road where armoured steel roils all day, all night here I remember my dream hunger for you leopard eyes wanting to be first and forbidden in the year you walked over the mountain orphic boy you kissed me then and the two parts of us sang like the morning stars we made love in the glow of a dying fire and I took away your heart, that part of it which fits my mouth so you would know its taste when we met as strangers in a room full of islands boy I am a girl watching you walk over a mountain hidden in girlsmiles the fountain kisses the wind in every language under the sun I sit down again at that table under the lindens but where are you who loved me?

the string you called love is broken was it nothing but words? why have you abandoned me who cannot follow you out of time? what is a bullet when death has so many memorials in my living flesh? you found so many ways into me I am punctured beyond repair now I ask you to put your mouth to these open doors and blow me out into the world perhaps I am useful little bits of me stuck to little bits of you confetto e confetto we will bless these holes we will lift the veil, we will kiss death

the sea breaks like sex

on the beach that is infinitude, that lying down 8 of lovers' arms repeating the walk at midnight with alcohols to cool their burning lips and instruments for making music with strings and skins and gongs

on that beach is written the return of the gods and other mysteries we wanted answers for suns and arrows streaming in the firmament a low bow wrapped up in swansdown stitched to souffle silk waves of applause careening off the starlit auditorium for all things possible all the walks in the world from Tabriz to the sea one step from the bench to the moon one more we look up in our company from the cold sand and there's the morning flight overhead and the angel propelling us backwards into radiance the angel Masmariah saying summer ozones double single circus angels breath rivers praise lifted hearts alight