New Poem: Burial Rites for the Riteless

Burial Rites for the Riteless

When weeping

but still vain

we crawled out from the Garden of Eden on weakened knees,

our eyes were surely on the skies,

our hearts convinced our hands a grander

more productive garden would grow.

Our gardens grand at last

And even majestic grown

When seen without memory

Or known without knowledge of the world’s whole.

But seen complete

Our gardens are

Chaotic

And tangled grown,

When all the world’s edges are gathered under glaring magnitude

And collisions are pronounced by the unlistened mages

Of yester and today.

In our gardens we have buried all our bones

And watered some,

Forgotten others.

The blood of the trampled

Underfoot and forgotten

Is filling up the barrows

And leaking into fountains

And burial rites that apple trees and roses

Once knew best

We have buried with unburied bones.

The bone-piles rise:

Ancient and holy scavengers ejected,

Scents of death severed from the rounds of the living.

I too took a turn

At garden-growing,

Found my books, my seeds, and my time,

But left off at weeding.

I always felt digging in my heels

The cracked ribs of Able:

my blood gushed,

my garden wilted.

My eye for eyes,

Heel for heels,

My limbs for all the rest…

I have held a cup of blood

In my tired

Raging hands

And been urged by sinister others

To “drink, drink,

Drink to success,

Let not the weeping of the maimed

And hungry

maim your thirst!”

“Oh” they say,

“Oh,

The pain,

The crashing

The thunder is not divine,

It is but a passing fury –

There are no more hurtling Furies

To be unleashed upon the grievous world!”

And they run around dancing somersaults

Upon the graves of the just

And blameworthy alike,

Perfuming rocks with rose water

And taking trees to task for

Littering their yards with leaves.

Our gardener’s gloves are stained with blood.

We have lost repentance to the overgrowth

And the plain white wind waits to make our home

A perfect circle once more.

We can no Eden dig up,

Rediscover,

Or grow for our own narrow time.

The long shadows of writhing Furies

Have long been cast

Upon our bickering backs –

And it is but a wondrous spell

That holds us from the brink.