02-25-2011, 07:59 AM
for Priya Dileep
The river woman, now past thirty,
still retains her dark beauty.
The weeds, the weeds, they lash her crimson thighs,
the colour of her heart when twilight beckons,
closing in like a nurse who lifts the blanket, and reveals
her poetry, the body house of perfect dreams,
the brown confessional, its metal grate and crucifix,
and her words, her words, seeping through the vicar’s ear like
haunted chamber music, blood red, the final work of
some young mad composer, the pistol aimed at his temple,
as he records the closing notes, and into solitude goes gentle.
Learn from her, mere bobby-soxers, her voracious lyricism
devours the world like a lecher his prey, and leaves behind
a trail of tears which forge the way, dear ones, to the land
where rain dissolves, and each droplet makes a dream, the
resultant rainbow an eternal blessed orgasm, a paradise of sighs.
![[Image: Columbia_River_Woman.jpg]](http://www.rogercooke.com/images/Columbia_River_Woman.jpg)
The river woman, now past thirty,
still retains her dark beauty.
The weeds, the weeds, they lash her crimson thighs,
the colour of her heart when twilight beckons,
closing in like a nurse who lifts the blanket, and reveals
her poetry, the body house of perfect dreams,
the brown confessional, its metal grate and crucifix,
and her words, her words, seeping through the vicar’s ear like
haunted chamber music, blood red, the final work of
some young mad composer, the pistol aimed at his temple,
as he records the closing notes, and into solitude goes gentle.
Learn from her, mere bobby-soxers, her voracious lyricism
devours the world like a lecher his prey, and leaves behind
a trail of tears which forge the way, dear ones, to the land
where rain dissolves, and each droplet makes a dream, the
resultant rainbow an eternal blessed orgasm, a paradise of sighs.
"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges." - Gene Wolfe
