The curious shredding of tissue by healthy fangs
The firm and indisputable affirmation of the Truth?
I listen to the gall in my own blood tune.
I have plucked every hair from my head
And martyred my face with my nails
And rent my stomach asunder.
A Nude Woman, I have published my own death
And worship at the feet of my own forgery,
Marvelously disfigured.
LIII
Cleopatra
I fall away from distant stars.
Flesh pulled back in the distress of acceleration,
Stubble wrenched from my shaven head,
I am not beautiful.
All my pretensions of normal womanhood
I’ve shed with gravity.
Fragments of myself hang in the air.
With the feeble determination of the insane, I invent
Fresh portraits of myself
That I do not recognize and cannot reproduce.
Plucking out what I can bear,
I turn in slow motion, prisoner in the Snake Pit,
Doomed to listen again
To the recital of my suicides.
LIV
Cleopatra
I’m leaving this place, cheeks swollen with
Puffed breaths of desperate Life, swaddled in
Silk sails embroidered delicately by infant hands
I have glided from mistake to mistake,
Striking my colors for all to see,
For I am the Signifier, the Way is in me.
I’ve unsealed it in one blinding Wound.
Drumrolls of sound break the pain spiraling towards
The high-arched vaults of Delphi, rancid as the
Oracle’s breathe and smooth as a divine phallus—
A Hallelujah of crescending spasms, tiny splinters
Of agony pressing bone like the Moon of your thumb,
And serpents lick the convulsions of new chromosomes
That transforms the woman.
LV
Cleopatra
Politics and War forced me into this.
And this shall be my epitaph.
Who are you to say that one cannot
Believe in something
Beyond the downcast liveries of Power?
Today I am not one day older, but One Thousand.
I am Sphinx, the seventh Cleopatra.
Eternity and I are twins.
Though I twist and turn in that knowledge,
Whatever the price of this semi divinity,
Whatever the price of these onrushing Mars-plated Asps,
I am ready to pay that price and with interest,
For what more can a woman strive
Than to love once more?
LVI
Cleopatra
And so love passed through a Nude Woman.
My sun was in your moon,
Astrologically fixed forever,
My spirit distilled in your flame
To pure sapphire-veined gold.
The fanatic is gone,
The formula, acid-engraved on my soul.
My heart fiances hotly with Galaxies,
Liver and spleen pure rock crystal,
My body a transmitter of rare and charged energy.
Our milky ways curse and rumble
On the edge of space—
Violent configurations
Of the End of Love.
Plutarch
Her death was very sodaine. For those whom Caesar sent into her ran thither in all haste possible.… But when they had opened the dores, they founde Cleopatra starke dead, layed upon a bed of gold, attired and araied in her royall robes, and one of her two women, which was called Iras, dead at her feet: her other woman called Charmion half-dead, and trembling, trimming the diademe which Cleopatra ware upon her head… yet there was no marke seene of her bodie, neither also did they finde this serpent in her tombe. But it was reported onely, that there were seene certeine fresh steppes or trackes where it had gone, on the tomb side, toward the sea.
The year 30 bc
LVII
Plutarch
And so Love passed through a Nude Woman.
Shrieking through the celestial equator,
A tail-less comet, morally obligated to conjunct,
Leaving traces to be discovered later by our progeny.
For this, too, was trotted.
Like Gods, they coupled to form a new race,
Destined to love more than we ever loved.
Predicted by Eratosthenes of Cyrene, I say,
It was not like anything we ever heard of,
And those who subdued them say there will never be
A parallel for that pair’s brilliant pilgrimage,
A prodigy of gravitational force intercoursing,
Traveling itinerant and transplendent,
With Love’s ferocious, refractory fame.
Plutarch
But Caesar though much disappointed by her death yet could not but admire the greatness of spirit and gave order that her body should be buried beside Antony with royal splendor and magnificence. Cleopatra had lived nine and thirty years during twenty-two of which she reigned as queen and for fourteen had been Antony’s partner in his empire. Antony was fifty-three according to others fifty-six years old. His statues were all thrown down but those of Cleopatra were left untouched.
Epilogue
III.
ANNA
1974
Anna
1.
I remember
You,
Anna.
I walk this narrow brick alley
Named after you and
Look for myself.
I come with someone you’d like,
A friend,
A lover.
I try to see through this
White clapboard house
Into my beginnings.
Any history will do
For those who have none.
It seems you lived so long here
They named the street after you:
Johnson Street,
House number seven,
Kingston, Toronto,
Ontario,
Canada.
The end of the line.
Great-grandmother
Did you know?
2.
I remember
You,
Anna.
1945.
You must have been
Eighty-five or even older;
It hardly matters.
And I?
I was six.
I knew the word for
Empress
Imperious old lady,
Amber-colored,
Chinese perfume bottle
Engraved with jewels,
(Beautiful jewels, I thought)
Set off by black crepe,
Hair straight as a song,
Disciplined
Into a silk cap,
You looked at me and murmured,
“Too dark.
She’ll never be beautiful.”
Oh Great-grandmother,
The blood
You let
With that
Offhand remark,
The absolute wound
That saw
My life flow
Out—
Sweet dreams of myself,
Shot free like stars spinning
From another galaxy!
Great-grandmother
Did you know?
3.
I remember
You,
Anna.
Queen,
How could you have begun
In slavery?
Staring with unfocused infant eyes
As your mother dipped her hand into
Blood and drank
The promise of the Revolution
Swaddled like a tiny Egyptian on her back,
Clinging to her frightened heart.
Did you feel the stars rush by?
Feel the Tall ship sweep onto the wide sea
Exhaling frosted panic onto the night?
How does one run to Fate?
Why did she choose the frozen wilderness
Of Halifax and exile
What made Maria’s
Allegiance?
An overseer’s rape?
A husband sold?
A child born not free?
The ache of the African sun in her eyes?
The white sand of Nairobi
Shifting under her feet?
Did she remember
The Nile?
Was it a hot breeze off
The Sahara?
Could it have been a sigh from
The Indian Ocean?
Great-grandmother
Did you know?
4.
I remember
You,
Anna.
Maria,
Whatever she sought,
Could she have found it
Here?
Then?
Abandoned and betrayed in such desolation,
As hard as African grass is
Tender,
As bitter as African root is
Sweet—
Toronto.
All lean-tos and log cabins,
Hysteria, mud and greed,
The city hall a tent,
A frontier town of beaten raging men fleeing
Histories,
Fleeing the victorious slaveholding Patriots
Stalking a Future,
Killing Indians already backed back into
Doom,
The bear gone, the black pines bled white.
But she was free.
She hauled timber,
Burned dung chips and sod,
Ate corn pone Indian style,
Beat back bears, snow and filth.
Free,
She slew thieves and vagabonds,
Rapists, murderers,
Slave kidnappers and bounty-hunters,
Free.
Did she dream of Timbuktu?
Great-grandmother
Did you know?
5.
I remember
You,
Anna.
Maria,
I see her ruby
Burnished red with Arab blood,
Swiped with Portuguese
And God knows
What else;
Rapists (All) the
All-Colonial-Melting-Pot.
But from what place
Comes echoes of Krishna?
From Zanzibar or beyond
The Indian Ocean?
Ghosts of Berbers,
Hindu merchants and
Chinese sailors,
Like waves washing a skin
That changed color
On different days,
Delighting her husband
(Not your father).
Your father
You never knew,
Orphan and madwoman,
A brown Botticelli
Rising whole out of an
African seashell,
A stranger to that
Ex-slave cabin
And those stark Canadian nights.
Great-grandmother
Did you know?
6.
I remember
You,
Anna.
You
Who mixed your strange and
Raging blood
Raga-scented with
Islands and oceans with
Some Scottish farmer
Seeking warmth and sunlight
In your skin,
Seeking respite from the wilderness in
Africa and India.
Did you love this man?
Walking barefoot to that barren homestead,
Your wedding dress strapped to your back,
Clinging to a frightened heart
As you clung to Maria that night long ago.
Did you love this man,
Pale and silent and Northern,
Exhausted by Canadian winters?
Who gave you, your only child,
Agnes,
Fair and freckled farm girl
With dark eyes and red hair.
White.
Beautiful.
At last.
Isn’t that what you wanted me to be?
Did you love this man
Out of the Canadian winter
Who gave you your only child?
I try to find a face for him,
A laugh, a voice, a walk.
Great-grandmother
Did you know?
7.
I remember
You,
Anna.
Agnes,
Who grew up in wheat fields
Alone
And fell back into
Blackness,
In love.
How you must have hated your son-in-law!
West.
The biggest, blackest, handsomest
Man she’d ever seen.
Poor farm girl Agnes!
West,
A foreigner,
An American,
Smelling of strange, mysterious places,
A fine jive-talking, saxophone-playing,
Tambourine-thumping,
Bad-assed-jazz-musician from Philadelphia.
I’ve got to laugh,
But she was happy.
Happy.
Falling back with a vengeance,
Back into Blackness,
Back into the passionate embrace of the ghetto,
Back from that lonely country farm to
San Francisco,
Washington,
Memphis,
Chicago,
New York.
What strange and exotic places to her!
She never had to dream of Timbuktu.
Great-grandmother
Did you know?
8.
I remember
You,
Anna.
Agnes
Ran away with an American
And broke her father’s heart,
Turned it to stone.
Against you both.
Bad blood,
Raging blood raga-scented
With islands and oceans,
Uncontrollable,
Unpredictable,
Uncivilized.
Love!
There must have been some,
Love.
Kid Ory/Fate Marable/Albert Nicholas
Pap Celestin,
Love!
Zutty Singleton/Ollie Powers/Fletcher Henderson
Trixie Smith,
Love!
King Oliver/Barney Bigard/MA Rainey/Carroll
Dickerson
Bessie Smith,
Love!
Before Agnes came back the first of many times
To leave then reclaim and leave again
The fruit of her love.
Oh, Great-grandmother
Could you not have bent a bit for her?
And finally the last return, the ultimate exhaustion,
The two stones of your heart,
Side by side in their wheat fields.
Great-grandmother
Did you know?
9.
I remember
You,
Anna.
Agnes,
Did she really intend
Her child to be raised by
The Sisters of the
Immaculate
Conception?
Vivian,
Juice of such a wild and heathen
Ride,
There was nothing
Immaculate
About her conception:
Some funky hotel for
Colored,
Last exit of one-night stands,
Blue walls, neon-kindled,
Drums hardly stilled and
>
Tambourines.
How you must have hated
Your son-in-law!
West,
He dragged your Agnes,
Back to Africa,
And made her happy.
Happy.
Did she dream of her Canadian wheat fields
Riding the lonely night trains?
Did she whisper
Father!
In the deserted dawn
Still reeking tambourines?
Great-grandmother
Did you know?
10.
I remember
You,
Anna.
Agnes,
Vivian,
How they must have prayed over her
Those Sisters of the Immaculate
Conception
Who had never known
Tambourines,
Who in the panting
Hysteria of their cells
Had never reached
That State of Grace called
Tambourines!
How they must have prayed
Over her,
Leeching that insurrectionist blood
Raging and raga-scented.
You
Put there;
Yourself,
Anna.
You
Who could not
Not have known love.
It is in your strange and raging blood,
Raga-scented with
Oceans and islands.
You must have lived love there
In the Canadian wilderness
With your farmer.
You walked barefoot to
Great-grandmother
Did you know?
11.
I remember
You,
Anna.
Agnes,
Vivian,
Who limped out of her
Catholic cage
At seventeen,
Looking for Life,
Looking for her father,
Loving him through all those
Hail Mary’s
Full of Grace,
Dreaming of him through all those
Hail Mary’s
Full of Grace,
Who limped out of her
Catholic cage
An atheist
Full of Grace,
Full of Youth,
Looking for her father,
Finding him in Baltimore,
Smelling of cigarettes and pride,
Dying of chronic nephritis,
Bestowing love too late.
Vivian
Who limped out of her
Catholic cage
At seventeen,
Undaunted by all those
Hail Mary’s
Full of Grace and
Ripe for Love.
Great-grandmother
Did you know?
12.
I remember
You.
Maria.
Anna.
Agnes.
Vivian.
I am the end
Of our line.
Everytime a Knot Is Undone, a God Is Released Page 7