(on genocide in Armenia)


imprinted in claylike canyon

picking by finger by finger
8 decade old death, fibula and socket
femur & skull

only a little
killing field, only 50000 here,
holocaust-in-miniature, genocide in proto

resettled in sand, unfortunate tragedy,

gendarmes and pashas

eyesockets and teeth, men rounded up and taken to market

tied by their feet to the tail of a horse and galloped up a ravine.








___


the caravan advances the creeper on the white bull rhyming its bells
she in saffron as the evening-hour behind are children and the younger maids-

all riding on the mountain deer the clouds fill water from the valley’s dew

the child urges his mother to recount the legend

of fire and fever, scorching up the mountain’s skirts. the mistress then puts out the fire with her imploring tears, made it green, made the lucid lake of blessings placid again.

nectar in the vase. the heat, the labor, the pain of journey all reconciled-

by the sight of the Silver Mountain- and in its vale, florid clusters-

the world seemed small, five pointed as a star. birds and animals twitter on the glassy surface.

the moon asleep, her hair catching stars, her skirts the valley’s flowers. the sun had rolled down the other side. the mountain now in a crimson of sunset, seeming to itself meditate-

swans sing in the water. enfolded palms hold votive marigold.

the bees-buzz echo, animative. the stranger outlines himself in her chest.

memory’s forgotten lunar wavelet planets and stars are abubble in this auspice of consciousness-

the night’s eyelid closes, the journey is over- a passing, fleeting sorrow,

the wrinkles in her lip help play the flute the water below is both crystal and golden with the reflection of all the dispersed pollen this is heaven’s yard, the dance of flowered plants,

each branch with a hundred blown buds hang heavy. the snow light is golden too, the moon is diadem

sportive, simulative-


_______



this skull collapses in the palms into golddust

this word is not worth the breath it consumes.

food for pomegranate lips, only a handful of earth is needed

to cover this corpse ( & there are mountains all around)

empty desert cisterns piled high in mangle

(I dig graves for one, two, seven … but how many?)

the desert sun blotches the nude to olive
(6 months naked in the desert, walking behind the horses)

(in abandoned railway quays and yards, closeted with gun machine fire)

human redness, malarial marsh


the reich is not yet warm in its ash, nor the nineteenth century

leopald’s congo

________

no more buddhas-

sitting upside down speeding down-
ward underwater deep into the emerald, miniature
legs rousedly scissoring the blemished dream-grain
shearing the liquour-ous surface, scattering fishworm eyes

four arms unwaving, limp, aniconic, mind lost in some damp interior
intestine not dream nor metaphor nor language not
trombone can save this undeft,
clumsy enlightenment, this waking

______