Hunger's Brides (166 page)

I have lost her music.

Is this the price her tears paid? A roaring in the ears that swallows up the music? Did she sacrifice even this, the music in her mind? Would I—have I already? Is the price of penetrating her silence that the music dies in me? Can I sacrifice even this work of years so close to finishing?

I have come so far. Can I follow her even across this last bridge? Or does it all end now and here? I have reached the heart of Mexico. Hear it?—beat so wildly as I hold it up. Hear it?—pounding in my ears. I have come for the Eye of Egypt, the silence of Horus. To solve the riddle of the Science Queen. I have come for my eyes of wonder.

Where are my eyes?

What do I still have to do—let me lift the veil, hear that silence, see with the power of the Eye Restored!

Or haven't I given enough?

Ours is the eye unrestored, Apollo eye ascendent…. Don Juan eye that hungers, that consumes the world—shielded from the Gorgon / turns her into gold.
¹¹

Eye that hungers, I that thirsts—give it vinegar, put it out it burns.
But if I'm to be made deaf to you now, then I'll hear you with my eyes.

With eyes made to hear, fingertips to see. Through the lenses of the Science Queen, soothe pain's most silent scream … with tongues of flame.

Is Juana's synthesis of the Science Queen a
synaesthetics—
a knitting of the senses for new metaphors? / a fitting of lenses for a new eden….

And how bright there does a green grape blare? There, what hues hew to smooth?

See that softest sadness of blue, cleave / where it trembles cleft and bruised….

Up there. The answers are up there.

Tomorrow I go up. Where I have not let myself look. To where the fire and ice and rose are one. To feel them dance together again in the still throb of this petalled palm, in its livid flame snaking up this arm.

Tomorrow. I find out if I'm strong enough, care enough … find what's left to give.

A
SCENT
        

[19 Dec. 1994]

3 A.M
. A
NOTHER NIGHT
, dreams of dreamless sleep….

One day at last not like the others. A day—one day—to break the four-year fast. I take the last breakfast of heroic champions: tortilla cardboard, corn in the crop / chewed to kidney paste the brickred beans. Pack the driedrice basket to strew my bright triumphal backpath. Pack up the last three books, the mangled notepads / pencils pens. Powerdown the Powerbook battery light blinking frantic frantic.

Outside I stand planted in the still cold air under the malevolent four hundred stars. Hours yet to red daybreak. Set sail forewarned now four-armed under the ensign of the morning star. Lord/Lady Dawn who does battle with the sun.

Into the gleam of this flagging penlight signs a green semaphore, my coyote-eyed escort. Follow the fasting coyote up. Up onto the near and far of ice and smoking stone. Fasting coyote what do you eat—only Apollonian rodentine plaguevector nectarines, replies the coyote/poet wolfish-grinned. So we'll go together!, share rations, call our mission plague control.

Dead ahead the mountain, a darker shade of night. Disaster's nightshade steeps and stews.

Vain obelisk I will see you scaled and bated. Swordpoint fulcrum of states—liquid earth, glass supercooled, water superheated to steam. Sky that rains fire. And I am that rocking cradle vexed to a quintessence. They send for ice. I will bring down conflagration.

Beware her red hair she eats air like men
.

Up and up into breathlessness. Up through mist and the last dwarf trees, hunchbacks bent in drifts.

Up out of the cloud and into blinding day!

This cone a soot-rimmed sear of white. This aspirate light that brands its taper to a gasping throat.
Why was the sight / to such a tender ball as th'eye confined—
LET ME SEE THROUGH EVERY PORE

See through these tricks of light and distance. Shady lightbrakes—light that stills the eye. Carves and cuts—edges of light.

Light that wedges and splits /

      wisps of It, from blocks of Nought.

2
P.M…
.

Horizonless distance of rustsmoked sky. How high how high … Windblown ash, swept slopes of slate and rock, faint trail hedged with cairns.

Black ice and obsidian gleam—plunge to bludgeoned knees. Better I crawl—my snowy red crayonscrawl of humility.

On humble Humboldt up and on! Gravelpockets of shrub—gentian this?—a field of tiny cactus purpleflowered—gather a sample for the Beagle hold it close feel the thorns wake and warm and nettle these sleepyhead hands. Look see the ice and grit pouched under this talon-clutch of nails. Peel them back like petals of a rose.

3:35
P.M…
.

Earthquake in the sky!
Grey sway of quaked earth underknee—rumble of rock, reek of eggshell rot, sulphur mist. TEMBLOR! What next now—avalanche?

Glimpses of the peak no nearer … farther away then? Poor narcolept doublebent do you still know up from down? know seamonster from diving belle?

Chestcrack gasp and lunge of lungs. Aspirate rasp, exhalate of ground glass.

Sit awhile up here and rest. Time … a small smooth stone of word, wedged in the chest.

Uptilt this face to hear the sear the sunbrass blare

Tonguetrace the ripped blue streak of falcon screetch

Answer it!

I hear a cry … voice like mine.

Above, the peak … adrift in a cloudsped sky. Closer now bends its soar of near and far.

Dark cloud boiling up from below. Whirl of snow … a falling up. Stormcloud of unknowing climbs from my snowblind feet to muddled
eyes. Whirl of wasp-paper wafers / a roar of iron on the tongue. On, hadji, on through this greyflake storm of ash and snow. Tempest fugit, crawled.

Ahead a tiny redrock alpenhut allcomforts of home / little firehouse in the air is it real is it true? Cactus thornthrob behind one eye … realer, this pain than anything now. On, not far my volcano bungalow / my stormshelter squat and snug.

Thresholdstoop to cough and betelspew whorly pink candyfloss on the snowycone snow.

Pause at the door—ring the brassthroat sun's templed gong

Ears run blood—eggshell temples thunderhammered to tempura—

Wash of white, skullcrush fresco of Golgotha …

Shut the door Christ born-in-a-barn

Can't go up

I can't go on.

This is all, all I have to give … palladial thunderstone foundered, crashed to earth. Sisyphus and stone come to final rest. Phaëthon and chariot rubble-parked. Last stop last mansion final abode. Terminus.

Here I can rest.

      Feel better now?

Take a deep breath / deeprest.

It's over. Sleep. Screen to black.

But no, Lady Lazarus wakes! still undead—an hour a minute a year but not too late—so let it find this hadji here! Bring the mountain down to me I'm
ready
—pencilstub sharpened on these filed teeth—bring down the synaesthetic fusion auromantic febrifuge emesis for the gutblocked flea—

O bring me my eyes of wonder!—synaesthesia to strip off the anaesthetic gasmask of ratio / xenophobic blindfold of Cheops / precious serpent's turquoise mask.

Come and get me / ready or not here I am / tabula rasa

Come and get me

      spread out on thy razed-table—stirruped / ready to ride again!

Ears blasted eyes blinded tongue tied ready for the extreme unction—anoint me with a thrust of transcendent vision—give o give me the green lenses of her Queen of the Sciences

synaesthetic codex

    Mosaic tablets

      Silence's poetics

        hearing of the Eye Restored …