Duane Locke
3 poems
Echo to Narcissus
I am the rain whose hands
Caress the pods that have red seeds asleep in their nerves.
I come to you, Narcissus,
To wash away with my touch that will sail through your skin
The words spoken in old men's whisper that linger
and resonate in your blood
I come to tear down the billboards in your brain
that have made you blind.
I bring the key made of birds' songs
that will unlock the unknown room.
I am the rain falling on your hair,
To trickle as a finger down your cheek and under your chin.
Turn around.
Narcissus' Soliloquy
What I see in this pond
Is Sadness staggering
On the arc of my eyelashes
Reflected between oval leaves.
What I see in this lily pond
Is a bivouac of terror tenting my lips.
But I hear a voice,
A voice that rattled a gourd
On a misty prairie morning
When white gold tassel
Dangled from a new born ear of corn.
Where is this voice?
Echo to Narcissus, No. 2
I am the rain
That falls with the unique imprecision
Of a this - worldly mystic's conversation
With a space through which a goldfinch has flown.
I am the rain
That unties the blindfold
Tied on by the memorized streets
Of your childhood.
Turn around.
Also by Duane Locke The Dark Haired Woman Next Door -->
Duane Locke has been Poet in Residence at University of Tampa for over twenty years and has published extensively in print magazines such as American Poetry Review, Nation, Literary Quarterly, Black Moon, and Bitter Oleander. He is the author of 14 books of poems, his latest being Watching Wisteria.
|
