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after the painting Harmony by Remedios Varo
I set the musical stave on my desk,
strung notes on its metal wires,
using fossils, shells, prisms, as quavers
and semi-quavers, trying to make music
from matter. I summoned treasures
from the chest for so long
I thought it was bottomless, the source
of the rivers of sound that drove my world.
I longed for harmonies to grow the trees,
so the songs of their light would flood my studio.
The muse even lent a hand. She emerged
from the peeling wallpaper, her vellum-
wrinkled fingers moved the notes
until a faint prelude crept out.
The air vibrated like branches in a breeze.
I blew through the clef to add my breath
and the trees became a hovering forest. I composed
falling rain, dew-drip, the budding leaves.
From Poetry London 60 (Summer 2008)
I hear shots.
It’s the wind, I say.
Then, loud murmurs.
Surely the fountain below my room.
The moon is a bruised fist tonight.
It has obliterated the stars.
I sleepwalk across the tiny island
to you, mi Hombre Sin Miedo,
my stony love.
It’s dark and the padre in the chapel
with his missing arm and chipped toes
is soaked in yellow holy halo.
But you mi amor, my lichen-crusted
beloved, stand against this moon-lit wall,
eyes sewn to the sea. Such sadness
in the curve of your spine, the tilt of your neck.
Does the smell of death still reek
through the crevices of this blood-stained wall?
Do the cries of men in Franco’s blizzard of lead
still echo in the chiseled chambers of these ears?
Here are my eyelashes.
Take them in your lips.
Here is my forehead.
Let it rest on your chin.
Here is my tongue.
Something behind the wall shudders and
shakes
the ancient oak. Leaves flutter and rain.
We kiss like ghosts.
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