Subliminal words for “Death and the Maiden”
1
I will remember the smell of lilac
The white lilac, the purple lilac
And your voice
Dark and velvet
Rich with desire….
2
in starlit gardens
Light, fast steps.
The whispers
Are not from warm lips,
Shadows lean closer….
3
Folded memories,
Tracked, haunted,
Silent wings
Hungry….
4
Here she is
A budding, a blossoming,
A spring dawn, a summer dawn
Perfumed with sunlight
Alone, unconcerned, self-radiant.
5
A point, a pause,
A reason to slow time,
Slow space,
To cease pointlessness,
To hold still
Orbiting her gentle
Graceful gravity.
6
The clattering mists congeal.
I gather to myself
A memory of flesh,
An ache of bone,
A throb of sinew.
Reclothed and sublimated,
My fingertips yearn
( the push of, swirl of,
Flesh, a feast of remembering and forgetting).
Forgetting myself
Utter a sound of life,
Silk whisper, birdsong,
A thrush or blackbird
Sated on cloud and green rain,
A bundled heart,
Redeemed,
Understood.
7
A swan’s bones
Are as light as air,
As hollow as her sky-stretched voice.
8
It is the porcelain skull
Of winter, translucent
With hunger, decorated
With ice feathers.
Faultless, perfect ruthless frost.
All remorse stripped of flesh,
All bitterness spent.
All waters hollowed,
All sound rested.
A linearity, a sped arrow,
Targeted, released,
Quivering at its mark.
9
Stipule and stamen
We are petelled fragrant,
Purely, demurely lascivious.
Our love is perfumed,
Botanical. Wrapped
And layered, lipped
And tattered edge,
We protrude demurely
Into the world,
An impossible biology.
simonhlilly 