In Front Of A Candle

Of chased Gold, as

you told me to, Mother,

I shaped the Candlestick, out of which

she darkens for me in the midst of

fracturing hours,

your

Being-Dead’s Daughter.

Slender in Form,

a thin, almond-eyed Shadow,

Mouth and her Sex

danced round by Slumber-Beasts,

she drifts from the gaping Gold

she rises up,

to the Summit of Now.

With night-shrouded

Lips,

I speak the Blessing:

In the Name of the Three

who fight with each other, until

Heaven dips down into the Grave of Feeling,

in the Name of the Three, whose rings

gleam on my Finger, whenever

I loose the Hair of the Trees in the Abyss,

so that richer Floods rush down through the Deep –

in the Name of the first of the Three

who shrieked,

when called on to live, where his Word went before him,

in the name of the Second, who watched it and wept,

in the name of the Third, who piles white

stones in the middle –

I pronounce you free

of the Amen that overpowers us,

of the ice-filled Light at its rim,

there, where tower-high it enters the Sea,

there, where the grey one, the Dove

picks at the Names

this side and that side of Dying:

You stay, you stay, you stay,

a Dead Woman’s child,

sealed to the No of my yearning,

wedded to a Cleft in Time

to which the Mother-Word led me,

so that a single Spasm

would pass through the Hand

that now, and now, grasps at my Heart!