Adonis, you place into my hand
this ache that outsides break…
what outsides break come breaking in
a soul-affair so low that insides in
come pouring through
what such fair hand now shows:
held out, held up this hand for you between us
dropping myrrh (it opens to us, sir)
what shatters in it, scatters in it, matters in it sir
how could you do what you just did
how say you there the thing you said
a myrrh-mere dropping rushes through my head...
it says, "some noli me imprisons me, beware!"
some watcher watching has remade
a mirror for Adonis...and Adonis
it must carry now what carries back across
because a memory like yours
comes back and pours
a myrrophore, Adonis...
and Adonis
Memory comes back and pours
(don't strike where She is rooted, sir!)
she pours
what can't remember anymore
you, yourself that seed
in shadow like a boar
once chased her into trees—and there
a breeze!
(that must have mattered to this once, I too, forget)
how resins shut away are made to seep
and how you brother blue-black scars
to trifle with the handle of these bars
a vision pours me back and makes me drink
the myrrh still tastes, when touched to lips
her skin akin
& must suppose what watcher sees her
likened unto none—no valued one in coming
comes lit and like the burning morn that gave you worth
in ebony and art and deeply turning how you keep her
graying in your heart's own black torment
what burnings turn in scents of blue-black things—
in flecks of animals that shadow through
her wilder viscous thinned and gored and sored and
hearing where that bleu-noir in hurting said such things
and, still
she heard your beauty rhyming
in the memory of the trees their myrrh
& myrrh's lament
gives to hers its birth as well as yours
beware, should you go near that blue-black beauty
for you will die there where her outsides break
and cry there, too, when what comes breaking back
comes back forgiving you
but, in this wooded word
when droppings kill the myrrh the way I am
touch not kind sir my hand
-for Mark, July, 2004
Blue Melon Poetry Series
