Post by amelie on Jan 5, 2004 22:17:20 GMT -5
Like a shard of ice
In shadow through the thin
Night air, the condor files;
Swooping in shallow dive
Across the swirling snow
That dusts the stars
With vapour trail from
The howling peaks
Above lonely Arequipa,
And the low Inca plains.
Spectral, veiled in verdigris
And almost invisible,
But for her Silver tipped wings
that outshine the constellations,
In their slow tumble to dawn;
Prowling snowdrift and rockslide
In that rare space before space,
Up where the earth arcs, shivers
And shimmers, is her world;
In goddess splendour,
She preens and pirouettes,
To streak down over
Titikaka’s soft sheen,
Clipping the waves,
Wind foam in her crest
As Cassiopeia dances off
The dark surface,
And her feathers brush the sand
Along the opal shoreline
In search of carrion
To carry home between
Jagged rocks and bare treeline,
To the thunder struck,
Splintered bole of blasted oak,
Where her young
Chitter and squawk.
But home is not for her much longer;
They are almost grown now;
In spring she will mate with one:
A feral, clawing frenzy on the wing,
In passionate dive of pure release
And rush before the final moment,
Seconds from the ground;
Then back up to
The solitude she craves.
She is timeless as the mountains;
She has seen Pisaro come and go,
Atawulpa vaunt to her godhead;
But cares little for the ways of men;
There is no sophistry in her body;
Nor has she time for equivocation:
She seeks not redemption,
Forgiveness or release from guilt;
She soars far beyond the clouds
Far beyond the doubts that murk
And fog the vision of those below;
Beyond reach and above morality,
She knows too much and cares too little
To argue or to judge.
She is unchanged for aeons;
Perfectly evolved in eye and wing;
Exquisite in beak to tear the flesh,
And the power to rise and rise,
Rising forever through the void;
First to greet each morning,
Reflected in her red copper eye;
She is the immortal huntress,
Divine Amazon, amoral,
Rarefied and pure; A proud,
Fierce and lonely sister,
I wish, I wish
That I were flying with her…
i have a voice poem of this that can be heard at:
uk.geocities.com/melis_issa_poetrysite/melisandissa.html
