Icy Muse (April 2004)

I sing of my pale
contralto, bourne
of everlasting ice:
Inside every poem
there’s a Nordic
shore where she
waits for me:

I return, though you
bid me speak: I am
the mortal tripod,
you are the musk
of sweet death, witching
my words with a
wild trepidation.

When I lay pen to paper
you tear the ream
with cold nails,
as long as your stare.
Mad queen, you split
the coffins of a hundred
generations to haunt
me here, but why?
The world cares
not for you as I.

Together we ride
sea waves which
shatter far coasts of ice,
yet the highest comber
passes mute beneath
the world’s sotted,
clamorous gaze.

Of course, that’s you’re
old lament: It was
Homer’s brother you
favored, the one
who never made it
into the hall,
his lyre badly out of
tune, exposed to
the truths of
the salt cold shore.

Only you cared for
his song because he
sang it only for you.
The laurel crown is
only booty; its power
curses the upstart head,
the gold which it bestows
curled like snakes.
All else from him is filler.

So today I’ll not grouse
of that irrelevance
which your blue eyes
are an altar to,
knowing that I cannot
see more than a
personal scrawl
of black amid faint
blue lines, lines which
erase the transit
of dragon boats long ago

—your song refrains
below abbey pillage
and blood eagles.
O icy muse, let
me not forget
whose prow you whet.