The Twelfth Day
For Pam Cantor
It is the twelfth day
The hero will not take food
He refuses wine sleep women
How can the body not spoil?
Dragged by chariot
gashed smeared
in mud and horse droppings
Mutilate Mutilate
cries the hero’s heart
as he lashes the horses
around and
around the tomb
If he can just
make his mark on this
corpse whose
beauty freshens
with each lunge
as though bathed
in balm Even the gods
in gentle feast are
shocked: Is there no
shame? The hero has
no other life
He has taken
to heart a body
whose face vaulting
through gravel and blood
blends strangely
with the features
of that other
one: the Beloved
For this is
love: rigor
mortis in the
mortal grip
and never to let
go Achilles hoards
and defiles the dead
So what if heaven
and earth reverberate
release So what
if Olympian
messages shoot through
cloudbanks sea
chambers ether
So what if everything
echoes the Father let go let
go This is Ancient
Poetry It’s supposed
to repeat
The living mangle the dead
after they mangle the living
It’s formulaic
That’s how we love It’s called
compulsion Poetry can’t
help itself
And no one has ever
explained how
light stabbed
the hero how he saw
in dawn salt mist
his Mother’s face (she who
Was before words she
who would lose him)
Saw her but heard
words Let him let
go Saw her and let
his fingers loosen
from that
suspended decay and
quietly
too quietly
turned away