04 May Someone Had to Tell Me My Name
Posted at 14:06h
in Poems
Paper hung on my forehead, the sharp ink had said
Something I cannot read, so like a honeycomb reed
So like a locust at peace, so like the sense you receive
When you figure out you really messed it all up
Under the bark of trees long-forgotten with softwood rotten
The forest is ruin and ruins the world yet I be incorrupt
Because to some lies you listen and for some you interrupt
What else must you ascertain —
No, the Earth does not know my name
What are the plain things
If color calls the breed of berries, tell me mine on high thunderhead wing
For what the bitterword carries hangs on feeble, rising cloud-string
Who turned to stone these fairies and robbed them their choice to sing
For who dances also tarries, to adder-strike at what night might bring
I need to be on my own
Fairies in England where an angel haunts, where no river ever pleases to go
The ancient and modern mingle taunts, which is which I might never know
Each pretty thing my language flaunts, translation stole and cast to and fro
I no longer want to speak in wants, for justice called me through the snow