The following are a few poem-fragments that have appeared to me in my walks lately, especially through Regent's park. They are extremely unfinished...but i want to publish them because i haven't written any poetry here in too long a time. I will start again with more poems, and finished ones, in the next week or so, after my beloved visitor flies back home...
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El cielo de la boca…the sky of the mouth,
as if it were infinite yet unprotective.
He interrupts, amplifies my English idiom with his
own Portoguese one. El cielo de la boca…he repeats,
while I push a finger up, behind my teeth,
inviting and reinviting the soreness
of yesterday’s harsh, hardened Spanish bread.
In
his or her own heaven— celestial bodies
that fold, wrap and strap themselves
for pockets, bags, backs of baby buggies.
Only the infants’ heavens are transparent
to God’s heaven: clear plastic zipped
over tiny faces, wheeled, and seeing
ceiling, sky, ceiling, sky, ceiling, sky.
Most heavens are black heavens. Somber,
sophisticated, elegant, complicit
with other colors— even, in this day,
with the rich tone of wet earth,
they are subservient to purpose.
Those who see, record the colors
of some heavens, the patterns of others,
as they float like half orbs over heads.
Those who hear, note the sound
of crackling firewood. They are still, needing
closed eyes under their tent, to find
the sound in its purest form.
Yet,
perhaps only the child, with eyes
untrained, can discern the possibility
that water sounds are like fire sounds
when they strike on the heavens.
El cielo de la boca. The sky of the mouth
can be as impermeable, as painful
as the modern, portable heaven.
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