Birthmark (Today)

All metre and mystery
touch on the Lord at last.
The tide thunders ashore
in praise of the High King.

-- from “A Defense of Poetry,”
Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe (13th cent.)
transl. from the Gaelic by
Thomas Kinsella

For some—it is horsemen; for others—it is infantry;
For some others—it is ships which are, on this black earth,
Visibly constant in their beauty. But for me,
It is that which you desire.

—Sappho, Fr. 16, transl. D. W. Myatt

I was born to such
hapless outre & riven
song out in love’s
blue tide: The
gods scarred
or scored me at
birth with the
unlikely mark
of a red heart
with an arrow through
it & affixed high
over my right nipple:
I was a humming
baby who took later
delight in the sight
of pretty girls walking
by our front window:
Sang long & loud
to Big Toe my
toad in her yellow pail
out at Cape Cod where
we once vacationed:
Fell desperately in
love with the girl down
the street who swam
topless for me in a
bright blue wading pool
(we were 3): So when
at 4 years old
I sat on Jacksonville
Beach with my mother
& heard her voice inside
the surf I was already
old in that song, a
veteran sailor of
the rise and crash
of blue seem: The
birthmark faded around
then, it sunk into my
heart to conch a chapel
of that beach of
song and love and
you: Ever since
it bid me sing
for good and ill
these useless raptures
of sigh and swill:
No more of that
history this morning,
there’s work to do:
My wife and I up
now at 4 a.m., I to
work where the pile
is high, my wife on
to Wal-Mart to get
shopping done
so she can get home
& to work on her
fabrics, that
embroidery inside
her which must
come forth: Incessant
this desire to repeat
and name all the
waves which carved
a sound inside my
ear, or woke more
ancient tidals of
womb and gene
and heraldic
minstrelsy, like
an old song’s next harp:
This life is one
wave’s rise and crash
and ebb so wild to
reach you at last as
ever, pregnant
in every wave
you’ve bid Cupid
ride since time first
poured the seas: I’ve
long given up caring
how the world accounts
and dismounts this
blue tongue from your
salt throat: And if I
err, I err now wildly
enough to appease
the errant itch: I’m
not much different
from woman who saw
the likeness of the
Virgin Mary in a
grilled cheese sandwich
she had just taken
a bite out of, preserving
the morsel for ten
years (waiting for
the death of her
parents, she said)
& then selling it
the other day on E-bay
for $28,000 to an
online casino:
Same gal, different
grill: There’s lucre
aplenty to blow
in fustive coin, spume
and spew enough
of burning narhwal seed
to horn every ocean
womb: Enough sweet-
sounding syllables
to wash on every shore
that lies ahead where you
once walked and gazed
imploring emptiness
to send your lover
at last: That’s my gig,
my under-employ, while
the real life goes on
and down and through:
A happy life, I’d add,
composed of joys
which carry a high
and dear price:
This salt blue intone
is like bone-ribbing
for that big-finned life,
a cathedral keel
of wavelike bones with
all the world between us
and every song on loan
from the missal buried
far down there in
the cold dark sea
where you and I
sing in each other,
spinning the great
wheel over and over,
praying we’ll get lucky at last: