Carl Boon
Being from Eden, we believed
the sea was something to be held,
tamed. You turned your back to it
and six golden terns gathered at your ankles.
When you faced it, it stilled and gave you
fowl and starfish.
Those were the hours of no blemish,
of being, and we ate mackerel
roasted by a nameless angel on fire
that couldn’t burn us. We slept on jewel-beds
under satin and the stars, and the satin
and the stars were one until I saw you flinch—
a storm in you, a body. From before
the first I feared it, you becoming
needful and a man, you blending language
to your skin, desiring pain.
menigedu yihi newi
menigedu yihi newi
In the morning I offered you a plum,
an earthworm, a strawberry, but only
you could clutch my hip and wonder if
the closed would open, if the bodies given us
would last if there were puncture and a cry.
In a distant place a horse’s hoof touched sod,
a sapling snapped, a leaf descended,
and then you came at me in anger,
demanding the only thing
I had no power to give. A thorn
caused your wrist to bleed. A woman
not Me broke bread on the plateau
and made a song for us of human sounds.
You strode away in silence, hurt,
while I washed my body needlessly.
inami ya mech’eresha neberi
inami ya mech’eresha neberi
Clamor 