Pillar
Here is the park where my daughters played,
the stand where they begged me for ices, decadent, cloying, sweet.
Colorful scarves floated by, gracing the limbs of
painted women, wearing their bands of hammered gold,
dark, slow-eyed glances, traveling and lingering with every step
as their silk-wrapped feet tread lightly in the dusty lane —
mysterious flowers by chosen names, these mesmeric creatures
golden and lithe. Who could not see their beauty? They
wore it so well, by design and artifice, but still
whose ruby lips, moist at the fountain
could not call with dulcet tones, soft as velvet, dark with
promise, with shadow, beckoning
I should not think such things. I should not remember the
soft shoes, the beaded slippers, glimmering, glittering,
the combs and sticks for their luxurious hair, the gleaming colors of
so many uncaged birds fluttering in the laneway, floating from
branch to branch while they sang, oh, how they sang,
morning, noon, and night, their
love songs and heart’s ashes.
Painted: fingers, faces, toes.
A stream of fabric walking by, teasing,
while men reach out their stroking hands
We stayed hidden behind our silent walls,
cool beneath the leafy branches and tangled vines,
smelling the scent of perfume, sleek as jasmine
sharp as roses, gathering on the breeze and softly creeping,
brief kisses from afar. Now? Now, the trumpet, the clang of blade and
cold shriek of voices? metal? falling stone and wood, the wind brings
charring flesh and that sound, that soft gasp,
collapse, the rush and thrum of time falling, secrets
whispering
We run in the clear air,
in the hills beyond,
leaving behind smoke and tears and
dancing shadows, writhing, rolled with heat
swelling past seams, bursting forth, belching
over the great sussurring hiss and crackle and roar:
collapse, all things fall down
all things fall down
the golden voices, raised in one last conflagration, a bell note,
harp-string, is the last tower yet standing? I wonder —
