G.C. Waldrep
CRECHE OF SMOKE
Memory never ceases to make
love seem possible. In
this love is like Poland, a small
country bathed in poisoned
honey, watched over by thieves.
The youngest thief is bored.
The youngest thief has shaved
a pyramid from a horse’s
bandaged side, is still wiping
ice from his model of God.
This is what immigration is
like, another cartographer
swinging from a ruined bridge.
I can’t watch this movie again,
I already know the measure
in the symphony when
the cellist coughs, motes
from an iron hive. Every thief
understands the sky’s nicked
blade as a friend whispering
inanely into some other ear,
every thief resembles the sea.
You leap in, you leap out
again, clutching the archaic
torso of war. That rivers fill
with other people’s art
is immaterial, a pitted quern.
Everything is cold except
the mirror, which is available
for inspection. The youngest
thief saunters towards it,
palpates its diphthongs.
Memory says, balance a bomb
where spring fell back,
drenched and aching from
its prison lyre, no bright kites
riding the thermals above
the shattered manor where
electric wires protrude
from some dreams the saints
were having sewn by
a few poor women, pitiful but
quick yet with their hands.
PORTHMADOG
A wharf of sutures, my signature.
You can’t lie when the entrails
arrange themselves in perfectly
legible hieroglyphics. Everyone
is a priest in this hospital,
everyone has an argument
with God. It’s easy to comb
tragedy from the feeling of silk
against skin, to harvest teeth
from the dreams of the dead.
Planets brush their level pelts.
And yet, perfect things: fierce
net of crows’ calls in winter
as one walks to the cinema,
bronze smoking, some brooms.
I listened to two boys
cursing in Welsh while playing
a video game in a library
known for its devotional art.
Hunger is silent like deer
standing motionless in full view.
Either you have a gun or else
you’re as startled as they,
you find yourself hoping there’s
still time to learn to move
more slowly. Parallel octaves
mimic what the soul engraves
on the surface of money,
not faithfully but thank heaven
it’s evening now, you have
escaped ritual again, you map
the blond ribs of the cove
with a bit of chalk you found
when you were, if not a child,
then at least familiar
with children, their violences
little breaths the sea took
and then replaced, suddenly.