The Living World

The Living World

The living world was not the dead one we found at first;
abandoned like a bride, in the garden of home.
Now I am an old woman, and have learned to see
things as they are and are not.

Desire is an inconstant mirror
held by red hands for the houris of the hour
Today I left my house for a walk, and found
each tree a totem of Christ the Redeemer

II.

April comes; beloved does not come.
the fruit rots, the spring lies fallow
  and a heartbeat chimes again within the cadaver.

Desire is misery, and life. Each day
we rise to greet the blaspheming sun
and decipher the entrails:
hacked and masticated bodies
washed down the gutter with the rains.
With the spring's earth-turning, the dead also bloom,
and then zombie love wracks the garden.

III.

Christ roars like a god in the inner ear of the dead
the trees are penetrated
up to the tips of their nails;
The vines pine, and twist away into undergrowth
...
Today I left the house early, to go walking
something fell from my eyes