HELIANTHUS ANNUUS

  

Eye, the cauldron of morning.
--Sylvia Plath

 
 
 

In the distant, cold lands of the north
You have the amber touch of a woman
The subdued, shuffling running step of a circle dance
Ar sauli, pret sauli*
Delicate, gentle, soft glow

Here, nearing the equator
You become increasingly violent, a thirsty tyrant
Taking suck from the still-beating-heart
Blood of human sacrifice

You first rose in my eyes
A hot, red aurora
Brutal thing,
It may as well have been my heart

And as you rose
I held my unprotected gaze upon you until I
Etched you in my eyes

All masculine rage and fury your
Raw strength reins in
Snow-white, fire-breathing coursers:
Earth-lover
Day-break
Fiery
Red-producer
Flashing
Thunder
Fiery**
Churning the air with their merciless hooves making
An arduous arc across the heavens
They drive my desire

Your horses
Will obey only your hands
As I would obey only your hands

Enraptured
Beautifully blind
My singed corneas engraved:
A disc
Burned lesion

All it would take is to look away
Still I am mad with this madness

I turn to you
I turn to you
I turn to you
I turn to face my body full to you
I draw you in
I draw your warmth in
I keep you
I keep you

I am flowering in joy
Bright yellow rays shimmering
The fire of you hardens an inflorescence of mirrored dark crescents
One by one they burn black
I open wider
Curling back:  here's another one
Ovoid ebon rods
My radiant dark heart

The solano blows hot from the south-east, loaded with loess
You burn the earth to brittle dust
Still I lock my blind eyes on you
and wait again for you to rise again

Soon, the wine-stained finch will  come
Lean rakishly over my straw body
Over the skull socket
Pluck out a black pip and
Lift his throat heavenward to
Raise a jubilant song for our seed

Love, this is our season
 
 
 

8/12/2001
Ingrid Karklins
 



With the sun, against the sun, i.e. clockwise, counterclockwise
**Philogea, Eoos, Ethon, Erythreos, Ethiops, Bronte, Pyrois