between passages of
subterranean calamities
sits a sibyl,
her voice,
a large cascading thing,
every inch of you
in her swelling voice
she reverts to harmony
usurping your words
to invent rhymes and stories
the tune is thin,
unclear and strange,
of unrecognizable scales,
there is no orderliness
it wounds and wounds,
a wire spiraling into abyss,
this is what she wishes,
to be formless
like this tune, wayward
no one to predict her;
no one to form her
the author of the duet
is grafted on her lace
the moment she is free
she would tear it off
from then on
she is all impulse.
torrent; rivulets collide on panes,
within, two wayward tributaries
coalesce into one decisive stream,
words we wonderingly recite,
ornate, now and then boldly archaic;
have a lingering stately pace,
on occasion halting altogether,
like a turn in dance, or rest in a march
it's not the July torch spilling sweat -
it's our conflagration, invading,
heaping up a pyre of love
in this room with the shut door,
out of which stutters the unsteady
nightly tappings of a duet,
spiteful mutterings and garbles
replace the coarse lovemaking;
we invoke secret spells, maledictions;
when the guttural tardy thunder
miles away, throws us into a daze
we leave; as numb as
a walk away from the funeral of
someone we dearly loved -
bereft and spent.
