after Lucie Brock-Broido

‍

Hope, alas, is headed east —

                              but will I see the man

who raped me on the late marsh grasses —

          the water lilies & the needlerush

                              were at once, ablaze.

‍

          See me in the flowers burning

as the pilgrims gathered,

                                        wooden bells damping

          on their garbs, see me in smoke

from the mallow roses,

          wooly waving cloth in their hands.

‍

          I was enamored —

with an Andalusian, carried my torch

          for the myth of horses

made darkly —                   out of man.

‍

If I had conjured him

                    an innocent, what of me, then?

          And what of him —

bosom of stone, bosom of armor,

                              who I saw become Another?

‍

          Was it he who said,

if I was harmed, then he would kill,

                              or was it — devil in him

          that is bedeviled in me?

‍

                              I need not trade my soul

to possess the buttressed root

          that knocks him — cold,

                              harm wrung from the rag of him.

          A man walks the streets

of Massachusetts — and dangerously.

‍

                    Trousers, I suspect, agrarian

          and still on fire — in the lie.

‍

Is it you, perhaps, or is it you? Brunette

          in a bramble of brown and

                    the briar in the hem of his sleeve.

          What will come from beneath

me, then? Animalia, flame who shivers.

‍

          What can become — of a man

in ruin? Angel, come, and hold your hand

                    to my primordial heart. Hear me:

silence is more deadly than the devil

                    and my most haunting song.