Women don’t just walk;
their walking is entwining,
and better still
where sea and sun
are teachers of form,
a form rhythm-trimmed,
tuned to cras amet
qui numquam amavit,
quique amavit cras amet—
let the one love tomorrow
who has never loved,
and let the one who has loved
love tomorrow—not less.
To remain silent
would be to sin
against this Muse,
and Apollo himself
would leave me
without a word
in his train.
Oh, to summon is not to summarize,
she said, sensing the unsaid with a smile.
And do you know that with the Renaissance
we gave men a new sense for fingers’ touch—
by letting it mean “to play a musical instrument”
as well as “to take something thievishly”?
And why, you ask? Latin fingere—
to touch was to devise—and to touch,
we knew too well, was to shift and alter.
Even though hardly but the very few,
and perhaps not even the poets,
could suspect that fingere
is kin to faint—to swoon,
to lose possession of oneself—
that which fails to be musical
and does not know the play.
And what is more—the etymos
or eteos—the true and original root
in all this is dheigh-—to form,
though first to knead,
to lift and ferment bread into shape;
and from one single etymon
came a well-arrayed host:
fingere, as I have glossed,
feindre—to hesitate—and feint,
to make a pretended blow,
but also figure, lady, paradise,
and to feign—to conceal.
So all these are thus
dæges or diges—
makers and poets
of what may be made to rise,
just like their kindred,
τοῖχος—not only a wall,
but the snug side of the ship.
She belongs to a form—
and what that form is
barely understood—
only a sculptor-genius
of Egypt, India, or Greece,
might place a finger on it—
or one with the ear
of Mozart or Bach
hear the form divine
as it breathes and moves—
wave and whisper
folded into awe.
Morphē—structured form,
inscribed etiquette
of how to cut a living line—
that, from serene
and sincere between,
steps forth
and brings to presence
what alone endures
through each stunning now.
O Notre Dame! There over the Seine
you stand, your Lutetian stone
and its silent gravitas
measuring allotted time—
slipping through the grasp
of the voiding hourglass.
But you are a lady—
one of the many once
that men of faith rushed
to expunge from the ranks of gods,
whether from below
or even from the sky.
Thus here, in your loneliness
of naked beige and cream,
forged from the stranded sands
of long-bygone seas,
you still beautify yourself, coyly,
with violets’ shadow
and celestial blues
of your translucent eyes,
and hold your inflexible watch
as you weigh—day after day—
how much or how little, if at all,
the throngs stepping
inside through your carved gate,
heads bending back
to meet the lordly reach
of your ascending arcs,
can press your body downward
or lift you from the ground,
while you, yourself, a Charon’s
long and well-masked barque,
let them all come aboard—
and having taken them in,
you sail, and your silence
is the palladium none can clasp.
Chorus of the Wall-Stones of Selge
We, the stones of Selge temples, were cut
to face inward—
to see and to guard
whoever comes in.
But when people lost their faith
in the abodes of the sacred,
they, newly unanchored,
also unanchored us—
and set us as convenient sentinels
into the gaps of outer walls
they learned to trust
instead of the inner flames
meant to be ever kept alive,
which they then did not bother to repair—
for it was the chill of the new interior darkness
they believed would make all less painful.
And so they turned the world inside out,
leaving the center ruined and hollowed,
and so, step by step,
the once marbled and polished spirit
became broken spolia, silt, and mud—
for the outer cannot hold
all by itself alone.
And even now—as we lie
scattered and cracked—
today’s young women and girls
of Selge, now called Altınkaya,
are not allowed to go to the hills,
to roam the ruins and forests—
they must stay by their homes—
unlike young men and boys
who bring animals to graze
in the orchestra of the Selge theater,
and who are not feared
to stop and tap
into us
and unmute wisdom
from its pristine ancient source.
O subtle and fine
is the geometry of our waiting,
holding its timelessness
on the final edge of breath,
as even now, in devoted silence,
we press our memories
back
into their speaking shape.
По снегу следы ступней
уносят тишину
в мягком очертании
как вздох из нежных губ.
В память без забвений,
когда та под словом
переобразилась в стих,
а в белизне вокруг
прикоснулись сон и свет,
a каждый взгляд
касаясь ее глаз
найдет, что дрожит изнутри,
как будто это был всего лишь
переодетый поцелуй –
a тот слёзный, снежный след –
в неё и мимо – уходящий алфавит.
