The Ghent Review Volume1, Number 1, summer 2016 | Page 33

Lady of the cursive word
Star
into darkness resplendent
word
into silence uttered
water
into the emptiness of cupped hands
beauty enters its absence
to make a living semblance
as must the hand from uncut stone
the living vocal
of the celebratory voice
where joyous hosannas
sing water, word, and star
for the light is seemly
and in its rightful place
because if Blake told us it was so
then it is so
and anything other is superstition.
*
Now night, now shadows
her name upon lips
(for this there is tradition’s precedents)
invoked against the storm
winter and the ditch roads barren
the slow curve to be taken
a barrenness that was prophesied
the emptiness of song.
Votive hands are upraised to the moon
the remaining leaves fall into static streams
and all the byways are blocked
(there is no passage save the dangerous one)
the emptiness of song is everywhere
but her names are everywhere also
as if one might clash or merge with the other
to make for us