Le Bernin
This woman who meets me
in mirrors, who you alone truly
undressed – she is out of reach.
Her contours are translucent,
they burn in flames
like cellophane in the blind air.
Your hands are the only borders
I remember, they outline everything
I am and everything I ever was.
I am the line of red ocher
painted on your grave, curving
each letter of your name.
No touch alters your touch
How much piety is there inside
a woman’s body when it sighs ?
Each time you came, above
and below me, I vanished
into that one sound which claimed
my body was no longer here.
The warmth gone, the unborn child.
I am, extend my thirst —
Source : https://karenmaryberrpoetry.wordpress.com/2016/03/20/judith-or-the-book-of-thirst/
A consulter également : http://fichtre.hautetfort.com/archive/2012/06/15/daphne-et-apollon.html
My desire does not reside here.
It does not reside here and never will.
Over my head, I see black silent waters
bend homeward, brighter than silver.
I am the exact centre of a thirst
and all I need is a thirstier thirst.
This woman who meets me
in mirrors, who you alone truly
undressed – she is out of reach.
Her contours are translucent,
they burn in flames
like cellophane in the blind air.
Your hands are the only borders
I remember, they outline everything
I am and everything I ever was.
I am the line of red ocher
painted on your grave, curving
each letter of your name.
No touch alters your touch
no one seizes me.
When I walk down the streets
in widow’s weeds,
I’m like a color they can’t see
or don’t want to see spilled.
So they call it, simply, piety.
Ignoring black, of all severities,
is entirely made of light.
Like your absence by candles.
How much piety is there inside
a woman’s body when it sighs ?
Does it contains her spasms
when her thighs open to fate ?
I believe they don’t know what to do
with this certainty that the soul
cannot be sent without the flesh.
Each time you came, above
and below me, I vanished
into that one sound which claimed
my body was no longer here.
This is my letter to this azure
that never wrote to us.
The caress of fabrics, the birds,
rocks, dust and blood,
everything on earth, this place
of nonsense and wonder
is nothing but a fragile ritual.
Beasts recite and sing,
sometimes kneel, after days
of hunger, as in prayer,
hoping to be killed by thunder.
I go to bed holding the blue flame
of their breath, lessen the lights,
attend the dark, and offer
the joy we shared in this bed.
The warmth gone, the unborn child.
Piety, the word petrifies me.
Life knows nothing of scrutiny,
only the unceasing, wild liturgy
of the everyday, the repetitive
sacrifice. Death in blossoms,
hearing the wingbeat
of its own advent, lost in rose.
Defeated, one moment
by water.
I am, extend my thirst —
Karen Mary Berr