Four Poems

The Unicorn
 
My only one.                                                                                      
A dark hour catches me in the woods             
like sudden music from around the corner in a city.
I hear: grazing on the edge of the forest, a uni-                                 
corn (not to be confused with a rhino’s horn).                      
 
I’ve been taking you like the walls of a fortress,
endured as many arrows as I could.
And now the night is black and vast                                               
and the unicorn wails mournfully.
 
He is a rare beast. I quickly part
fragrant bushes, cross meadows. There
he drinks up every beauty, like water,
but I won’t let him steal a single breath of yours.
 
He is a gentle beast. And he has thin skin—
a spear will snap in half like a stick.
I suddenly fall asleep next to the slain
beast, pierced by a horn.
My only one.
 
 
 
Echidna
 
We’re coming back, having sprinkled the oases
with screams; blood on a scabbard, Eastern tan.
But our city is locked like an island of leprosy                     
or a cage with an echidna inside.
 
When we were roaming the desert we were
pierced by the sound of triumphant trumpets.
On pillars and wells, like salt sweat on cloth,
a carving was everywhere visible: the echidna.
 
We lost ourselves in the Saracen campaign.             
Victory was inconceivable, invisible.
And it was almost impossible to get home,
and the motherland seemed so spiteful, like an echidna.
 
Dear maidens withered in towers and cages,
postponed affection remains so chaste.
Mature desire froze in their aging veins,
and the echidna came to life in their eyes.
 
Here she is, like eggs she lays centuries
where deadly scaffolds rise at markets and music
comes from a brass band, where they live
and fear, where the crowd hisses like an echidna.
 
What can I do? A wheezing trumpet groans
above me. I’ve made it halfway around the world.
I can follow your coffin barefoot,
my dear maiden, my old motherland.
 
 

Griffin
 
My Lord, how foolish this world is!
What sorrow descends upon the face of the earth!
Under the sky, as black as graphite, I’m dying
in the sand. A griffin engraved on my shield.     
 
Rooks scream from bleak trees.
I fell from my horse and lost the tournament.
Now branches grow through me,
piercing three hundred holes in my armor.
 
Fly away from me, monster of banners,
you winged lion! I’m out of the game.
Weeds bloom from my eye socket.
I had no sword. It was a lute’s neck.
 
And the one who waits and inscribes my name
with a stylus for the hundred thousandth time,                     
protect her with your wing. And hide her, wordless,
in the ground, safe from deceits and insults.
 
Why don’t you fly off, then? On wet sand
you dance around my quiet hands.
And drink from me a long, everlasting river,
you who look like a raven. You’re a raven indeed.
 
 

A Fiend, or, a Devil                                                   
 
A comet has risen, forgive me, Lord!                        
Like a chain-gang of murderers, it plods past us.      
garments stripped and tails waving, it smells
like spirits, brimstone, and goat.                          
 
He’s the one grinding his horn against stone,
and everywhere people begin fornicating.
And girls as emerald as cabbage
enter forever into sweet shadow.
 
And a damp hoof beats a tambourine,
and incantations glow through his lips
under the peak of night’s tent,
where acrobats rub against nuns,
where old yellowed men mount young women . . .   
 
This body, this frightened water clock,
save it for me. I have always waited for her,
I will snatch her from the depths of night     
and wound her myself. I will enter every inch,
I will crawl through these opened gates.
 
And the fairy children will fly in       
with stinging cuts marking their future wings.