In the mirror of the First Silence
we, Beloved, made a pact:
You would speak me into being-fact;
I would speak you in every word I spoke.
I would lie a long night on your breast breathing like a child;
And you would not begrudge me my resurrection;
from the beginning of time, you have remained undefiled.
The stars are in your hair as flowers of memory,
the sea is round your throat with pearls of memory,
The sun beats up to the earth
and the earth reaches up to man
and rain encircles the earth to keep it green.
The earth gives the sun form.
And man gives the earth the reason for its solidness.
We went through the streets
that went through the houses
that were built in the people
had opal eyes and mushroom ears,
lips as beautiful and brittle as coral
and hair of violin grass.
Mountains are corruptible. But the work of our hands
time and wind and rain cannot destroy.
For our hands are the purpose of our blood,
and our blood is the river of our soul —
which sings the river, the purpose.
If only we could forget the story of dreams,
the history of hopes and appointments,
the theology of sowing and reaping,
the allurements of all that is not but which seems.
A house turned upside-down could be a boat.
And a man turned inside-out would be God.
But a house turned upside-down would collapse.
And an inside-out man is a ruin.
We have met before, many times, on the stairs of our blood
and sewn our lips together with the thread of breath