185

Mother
Elohim, my cry goes up to you.
            He is not of his nature : His sickness is
                        To hold the world before him as an automatism.
Come down, we are asleep and
            It is not too late, and it is cool on the balcony.
                        Time holds. Earth is particolour tonight, Elohim.
It is a gift of love I bring to you.
            The ghost of a giraffe is distended in the long
                        Vault of heaven, where the stars leap like children.

The living body of it lies in the
            Dust of the savannah, fallen half beneath a yew.
                        Dust. The constituent of man, and man's terminus.
The yew is older than the dust.
            The giraffe is white in the moonlight, like a particle
                        Of God's burning ejactile quivering in the vacuum.
It is inchoate, white, long, dim,
            Skeletal, abstract : it forms and reforms like
                        A thought. It is the first word. Stars fall. The ghost
Of it is distended in the heavens.

            I turn into the dark of the wall.
                        My breasts hang like shapes hanging over a cradle.
I am the lost and broken girl,
            O captain come through the wood, I am waiting!
                        The time is a memory of my sleep, and of my song.
I have seen your colour on the
            Stockade in the haze over the river. God's rifle
                        Is hanging above the mantle in heaven. Come home.
I have drunk myself to death in
            Our bed! but no, I am only asleep, and the light
                        Passes over my body like the movement of his grace.