Ins and Outs of Dead Men on the Rivers of Isis (milo, billy)

[Truerenigma]

It may still need some work, but I think I've spent enough time away from it to run it through workshop it again. Tetrameter accredited to milo.



Ins and Outs of Dead Men on the Rivers of Isis

First revision:

We wrap the bones in burlap - hide
our skeletons in sweat and blood
under the dust of our outsides.

Our heartbeat's thump is locked inside
a storage unit with the crud.
We wrap the bones in burlap hide.

We box old limbs in chests beside
a book we never understood.
Under the dust of our outsides

the rain exposes veins in slides
of rock, canyons, boneyards, mud.
We wrap the bones in burlap, hide

ourselves in weathered pelts applied
to vessels stoppered for the flood.
Under the dust of our outsides

the dead man dies again inside -
his phallus is a lifeless stud.
We wrap his bones in burlap, hide
under the dust of our outsides.

The new tercet is (IMO) much, much better than the previous. It is no longer disruptive, the sonics and images are consistent with the whole. There really are only 2 places that still bother me but instead of talking about them as they are minor concerns I thought I would speak of meaning for a bit.

Let me preface this by saying I am positive my take from the poem is not the author's intent. First - the title. I am not overly familiar with the river Isis as it pertains to Thames and I don't really see any interesting corollaries but I love the sound of the title as it is what drew me in.

As you may know, there is another Isis river in Australia. A friend of mine once wrote 3 sets of sonnets (about 2700 in total) about the trials of Orpheus. His summary is as such"

"The whole sequence takes place on an Australian beach, with a few
memories/soliloquys about my "former life" here.
In /Sonnets to Eurydice/ http://scrawlmark.org/eurydice.html ,
Orpheus tries to lead his dead wife to life.
In /Sonnets from Thrace/ (Moorhead), Orpheus sits on a rock,
bitching in song about the sorry state of the species, the Gods, and
the world at large. For his failure to maintain their religions for
them, the women of Thrace tear him apart and throw the pieces in the
sea.
In /The Singing Head/, the head has floated to Lesbos (Australia),
where it has been cavorting and conversing with a passerby.
There are dozens of versions of the legend; that outline is common
to all."

which is an unusual take on the mythos, but that reminded me that Orpheus' remains were buried next to the river Sys.

With all of this in mind, I pictured Orpheus' head still singing from the grave (of course) enrapturing these poor men who were caught up by the song, long dead and wishing to make their journey to the underworld but forever trapped in a kind of misery/joy by the charms of the Orphic singing - hence their lament here.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

Milo, the idea Orpheus being ripped apart into many pieces shows and interesting take that seems to be in conversation, probably via Isis, with the mythos surrounding Osiris. That my little vill seems to have joined that conversation doesn't bother me at all. I very much appreciate you taking the discussion of the poem to that level.

Speaking of intent--and there are a lot of parallels and conflation here--I wonder what you would think of these lines, which I had also been considering for the recently revised tercet:


We carve our caskets tall and wide
then sniff complaints of rotting wood.

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