This is a discussion group for poems alluding to the elements.
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This is a discussion group for poems alluding to the elements.
You need to be a member of David Brazier at La Ville au Roi (Eleusis) to add comments!
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I am in some heavenly place
A tree house where the storms are gathering on the mountain
and the river rushes in bright torrents over the rocks far below
The day has has just ended
and an early night breeze blows through the open walls
as pools of light fall and shift through the clouds,
emptying slowly from the sky
There is nothing here to keep the living world out
and I lie gratefully in the embrace of the soft night,
in the arms of the wind and the deep darkness
I am enveloped by the sound of the river and the rain
My body is a new land for small flying insects
while my heart is becoming a new land for this animal that
I am coming to know
The thunder is approaching
with drums and song
announcing night
Fire over water
Thunder over mountain
The leopard waits in the shadows
The water buffalo waits at the bottom of the rapids
raising his horns from the bright-dark cool water
and stepping forward as slowly and gracefully underwater
as a four-legged ballerina king
in a palace built of water and sky
Now the rain is drumming harder on the roof
A deluge of drunken river water risen from the valley
through the clouds to pour itself into itself again
All the sounds of the world are here in this rain
All notes, all chords, all symphonies and drunken cacophonies,
all lullabies, all songs,
all rhythms drumming themselves in and out of time
PREPARING THE GROUND
Stones in miscellanies of 108
white, rough, big and small,
each already a multiplicity;
ours is the counting
back to one,
theirs to be inscrutable
somewhere beyond zero.
Clearing the garden bed
until the earth turns satisfyingly dark,
even though one knows that
tonight’s rain will bring
another crop of rosaries floating to the
old wrinkled face of the earth.
Each pebble grasped
between thumb and finger
could be a tiny tombstone,
bone dust of some old beast
that walked or wiggled here
in the primeval land.
The gardener is kneeling,
wrinkled earth, hands, mind, fingers,
beside the slowly filling barrow.
Weeds fall in a pile, stones to the trolly,
gardening is sorting,
counting the treasures of heaven.
Fire in my mind, liver, garden, in my bed;
Fire in dream, image, touch, silent words never said;
Fire of the gods, on sweet ambrosia they fed;
Fire of painters, poets, artists, seers, mostly dead.
Fire flaming mattress high on the pyre
Fire surging upward higher and higher
Fire of gold, so far without a buyer,
Fire of silver music flowing from her lyre.
Fire of Aphrodite’s glow from distant parts,
Fire of the goddess, breaking rocky hearts
Fire of the loins penetrated by her darts
Fire of sweet girls, innocent or tarts.
Fire of the dew on a morning song
Fire of you, away so long
Fire of the few who still belong
Fire of the true that can’t be wrong.
La Ville au Roi, 28th October 2015