Pièce de Shakespeare
Come, sheathe your dagger definitions —
the Father, Word, and Holy Breath,
the swan of Avon, has returned to die.
Lord of language, auric egg,
he lies laid out in stiffness —
bronzelidded in the secondbest bed,
lips twisted by Venus into prayer,
coffined thoughts embalmed in a spice
of words which rise like crooked smoke
up to the nostrils of God.
Why even his errors are portals to discovery!
Following his lean unlovely lines
through spaces smaller than red globules of blood
we creepycrawl after his buttocks
meeting robbers, ghosts, old men, young men,
wives, widows, brothers-in-love;
the molecules all changing, the I becoming other,
the unquiet father reborn in the son —
but always, always, as we walk through him
we are walking into ourselves.
the Father, Word, and Holy Breath,
the swan of Avon, has returned to die.
Lord of language, auric egg,
he lies laid out in stiffness —
bronzelidded in the secondbest bed,
lips twisted by Venus into prayer,
coffined thoughts embalmed in a spice
of words which rise like crooked smoke
up to the nostrils of God.
Why even his errors are portals to discovery!
Following his lean unlovely lines
through spaces smaller than red globules of blood
we creepycrawl after his buttocks
meeting robbers, ghosts, old men, young men,
wives, widows, brothers-in-love;
the molecules all changing, the I becoming other,
the unquiet father reborn in the son —
but always, always, as we walk through him
we are walking into ourselves.
* A found poem sourced from chapter 9 of James Joyce’s Ulysses
- Michele Seminara 2014
absolutely beautiful, michele. i adore this poem.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much, Robbie. I'm thrilled that you like it. :-)
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