poem18 Jul 2016 07:46 am

Paolo_vetri,_museo,_1875,_03

Queenly robes,
the arms of lovers,
even skin’s soft, elastic grip
she no longer can recall.

Lurching from alley to avenue
she clumps her clumsy way,
murmurs muffled beneath
numberless folds of linen
brittle as uninked papyrus.
She has forgotten words.

Empty,
she is empty,
nothing within
except the heart
missing its metronome.
She does not tick in time
with the rest of the earth’s hours.
Like dream-people, she does not breathe;
the absent sound of inhale and exhale
dizzies her,
makes the world awry.
How could you miss so much
something you’d never really noticed?

This long wandering takes its toll:
she sloughs off wrappings
like a snake its skin,
yet no new supple self
emerges audacious and unblemished
in the wake of loss.
Her denuded brown feet
shrivel, mortified,
flesh laid bare in the most intimate revelation.

Another inch of cloth shreds;
with its end’s unwinding
an amulet for luck in the afterworld
clinks to the pavement.
She hears it
but its music has no meaning;
She doesn’t bend to retrieve it.
It would contain no clue
to what she’s searching for:
her name,
even the most trivial memory—
whether faience beads or carnelians caressed her neck,
a dear friend’s laugh,
the taste of figs,
was there a child?—
something of life,
something of self to hold onto.
Nothing comes.
Her wrappings trail her in the dirt
like the ribbons of a careless dancer.

Fumes of myrrh and cassia rise,
another amulet clinks to the ground,
as she unravels.

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