11-21-2016, 04:53 PM
Holy Mountain
1.
The Girl grew up to be a beautiful woman. Men loved her. Men fought for her. Fog fought
Fire, Tremors for her. He won. She ran to him.
An arrow followed. Fog embraced her, drew the same point through
his heart. They fell together, Fire rising from the earth, Tremors wrecking
the countryside.
Thus the Mountain grew, black as the night, obscured by white cloud.
2. After the Typhoon
Cacao lumber scattered
with the bloated -- woman
naked springing out
of muddy water -- white
elder love invades,
the shadow of her breast
crosses her navel, her boat
stirs her river
to the sea, and her voice
calls out: Come! send me your poor,
your sick, your suffering -- savaged
by the climate,
let me lighten your burden.
Her mountain, shape
of heaven -- white burden.
3.
If I were not this coarse a man,
always switching between
good Christian and vile Pagan
with every change of company,
would you have appeared to me,
hot white lady of the mountain,
when I shut off my headlamp
and scrambled down slopes invaded
by American mahogany? But there is
a second error of my nature
insurmountable: I can never be
as humble as your farmer. Even you
couldn't guess at the strange speech
of the pale white man who pitched
his tent so close to your hut,
at the intellectual's lingua franca
as vital to me as my sex.
4.
Surrender now, for God is with us:
his bird, the eagle, is our light.
The black feathered boa that constricts
your throat with ticklish grip, that thins
heaven's air -- the glassy knife
that slides across the skin, that severs
your precious sex -- the orange lump
that lies upon the seat, despised
even by daily crackers, cups of wine --
God shall turn them all to swine!
just as he shaved surrender's head
with summer rain and snow-like ash,
transformed her figs fat on the twigs
into slabs of spotted white,
then entered her dark cave
not with a torch
but with a snuffing wind.
1.
The Girl grew up to be a beautiful woman. Men loved her. Men fought for her. Fog fought
Fire, Tremors for her. He won. She ran to him.
An arrow followed. Fog embraced her, drew the same point through
his heart. They fell together, Fire rising from the earth, Tremors wrecking
the countryside.
Thus the Mountain grew, black as the night, obscured by white cloud.
2. After the Typhoon
Cacao lumber scattered
with the bloated -- woman
naked springing out
of muddy water -- white
elder love invades,
the shadow of her breast
crosses her navel, her boat
stirs her river
to the sea, and her voice
calls out: Come! send me your poor,
your sick, your suffering -- savaged
by the climate,
let me lighten your burden.
Her mountain, shape
of heaven -- white burden.
3.
If I were not this coarse a man,
always switching between
good Christian and vile Pagan
with every change of company,
would you have appeared to me,
hot white lady of the mountain,
when I shut off my headlamp
and scrambled down slopes invaded
by American mahogany? But there is
a second error of my nature
insurmountable: I can never be
as humble as your farmer. Even you
couldn't guess at the strange speech
of the pale white man who pitched
his tent so close to your hut,
at the intellectual's lingua franca
as vital to me as my sex.
4.
Surrender now, for God is with us:
his bird, the eagle, is our light.
The black feathered boa that constricts
your throat with ticklish grip, that thins
heaven's air -- the glassy knife
that slides across the skin, that severs
your precious sex -- the orange lump
that lies upon the seat, despised
even by daily crackers, cups of wine --
God shall turn them all to swine!
just as he shaved surrender's head
with summer rain and snow-like ash,
transformed her figs fat on the twigs
into slabs of spotted white,
then entered her dark cave
not with a torch
but with a snuffing wind.