Poetry by Coral Hull

From: The Sorrowing Harp Sequence

1. Anniversary Ghost


I. Celebrations

My sister, my mother, my father, my brother,
you were strong as a group, I was outnumbered
and your killing hands were upon my throat,
but still I flowed like a river and I did not die.

My heartbeat pounded like wings into the dawn,
as the plunging water filled my lungs,
when I left myself, to be taken away by calm.

I entered a world of profound strangeness,
where no tree grew and no bird sang.

It was dim and old and unbecoming,
like an unseen dream behind all of civilsation.

At first there was a black dog,
troubled and racing across the long lost scent
and a thousand howling hills in the night,
as if drawn from old memory.

Somewhere, I sensed the heartbeat of the cosmos,
but it was just a play of moonlight upon still waters,
where the storm of betrayal and the chill of deceit
within my heart, had sank forever from your sight.

Or so you thought --- but I did not die.


II. Generations

My glass eye opened from beneath the lake,
as shoulder to shoulder you lumbered away.

You were the last and first landscape.

You are the murdering tool for generations.
A beast of fear who follows instructions.
The curse was passed down like a stone,
into lives who had forgotten, so long ago.

I saw your back, as you left the water's edge.
Your face was turned away from the moon.
You were just like a cold and lonely planet,
a shadow to the galaxies, moving, unlit.


III. Questions

How must I sing to the stars with the voice of a lake?
How must I express to a night, the crime of this act?

I might have drifted away like river weed,
or leaves across the water's silver surface.
It would have been easier, had I vanished.

But I howled like a wolf,
until the moon blooded over with tiny bats
and the landscape of your many departures
turned to violet infra red.

Did you hear that mournful dog? Was one tear shed?


IV. Traditions

I saw two old eyes glittering, your lips as a grimace
that bordered an envious smile.

In this hungry way, you seemed to eat yourself alive,
at the time of my unbecoming.

The cruel lifeless gaze was like a faceted gem.
I searched for a soul, but there was no essence

I stepped right through you, to the other side.
For the corpse you had killed was left behind.

What has this sorrowing world brought upon itself?
How must I sing to those who feel the same way?

Where is the heart within, or must I abandon hope?
What is there left to tell, that is not already known?

Coral Hull 2005