To Villa-Lobos in Winter
by Diane Ackerman from Lady Faustus
Night falls: a panther
springing.
On a black branch
swarmed over by stars,
an albino moon
rigs its parrot wings
then glides away
while icicle vines
drip in the sweat and tremble of the night.
Reptilian waterfalls
twist and freeze,
drooling ice down each rock face.
It would remind an Aztec
of his white-bearded gods
Bochica or the ousted Quetzalcoatl
who, vowing he'd return, did as Cortes,
a blue-eyed apparition on horseback,
wild for booty and Christ,
this time drawn from a far darkness
to these pagan depths
ropy with gold,
croaking with demons,
hot with gem flowers
set in green bezels
and blood swilled from vein to sky.
Tonight creeps
like the black diamonds on a snake.
Out of gorges, tortured winds
shudder and moan,
then fill with the hideous
panting of the gods.
Silver amaryllises,
the streetlamps bud high.
Mudgore cakes the road.
Under the parrot moon,
soughing a pink eye as it planes
over farm and settlement,
like a knife-edged idol
so chaste, so delicate,
there will be no waking from
this oblique dream of night.
1 comment:
Blake said...
Ruined? I beg to differ. There's a little yellow smiley face next to that haikoo.
Also, 20? I bet you had all sorts of moral compunctions about gouging eyes or beating five year olds with other five year olds.