Sand

for my mother

 

be aware that comings and goings

are like dreams,

like reflections of the moon on water.

–Yogi Milarépa
I can’t remember the future,

		              She says

The sea is breathing

is slow      fickle

expires and licks the shore

where the tide has imprinted

a damp trammel

There I place a net full of shrimps—

grey and vitreous like the sand

they wriggle between mesh and fold

caught in the tight crescent of weave

and slip out through my little hands
the sand sucks in my ankle

sucks in my memory

my footprint fills up with the sparkle of a tiny

mirror

and the next wave drowns it and laps away

discarded seaweed

translucent squid

and cloudy jelly fish


Each wave strains to heave

a sheet      hauls away

the weft of words

wipes it clean of all but one trace

                    sand memory
squeak      slip      silk

its torn scream

soft whispers as

a bird’s footsteps

the lace of empty shells

on the shore      the sand            hemmed in with time
heavy drape of dunes and tide swipe

fold upon fold where the wind of memory

                    dissolves  


Draped in dune folds

She rises underneath all

absence
                    Sand
and the dune outlines the reflection of the moon

in its waning crescent
Sands hostage speckled light

seeps from white gold dunes against cloudy waters

as if from a pupil open onto the void
Sand-woman

eraseable one

whose trace

                    dissolves

in the wind whipped squall

on the hillside
gold gossamer quivering under deep sea

caresses

as do her dancing feet in the rippling folds

the faille and satin

of a party gown


Fable of the Sand Woman

Ember Flame under my feet
                    phantom soul
She

wears out      at a pure      loss

the gold            She            spills

even as            quivering      murmur

                    hum and haw her words


O Danae body buried under the gold

of desire      sand      become
smooth and fluid mantel unstable

here      penetrate      her      dissolve

flame            palimpsest

                    of herself
in the eternal inchoate of shades that float by reflecting

the sea’s grey dunes and the sand’s waves
steps follow steps and do not end

                    no thread            no trace


The dune mimics the ocean

the clouds outline landscapes in flight

whose reflection collapses in the roaming shadow

of a tale beyond words
and Sand woman swims upside down

in a sky of centaurs

her powdery gown ripples in the clouds
her mouth open in the sand

spits the ash of her words

flakes torn off silence

                    from the sea where

                    may be
then drowns and ebbs in mud rumours
                    Beginnings


Sand’s head barely touches the surface

the sand in her mouth smothers her like a gag
catches in her hair

net of enmeshed roots stretching out

braided with gillyflowers the colour of violets
entangle with oyat organ pipes

reverberate the colossal silence

of her cry
                    of her absence


She lies of all her length like the dune also

nude

her feet touch the sea
and Sand’s hands      take root

they extend under the sand

write of creeping bindweed

restharrow with its butterfly flowers
the mandala of hope

barbed wire path pointing to

the end of the labyrinth

of solitude and suffering
and Sand opens her flower-eyes

washed-out like a winter’s sky

dead and upside-down stars

beaten by sidereal wind
and Her mouth relentlessly attempts

the cry the airborne sand

keeps smothering


Erasure — sure out — out of the blue

Loose unmarked sands

and the woman with no face            blood
salty shimmer of shoreline dunes

nues nudes denudate

reflection in the clouds that fray            fall apart

unravel      thin down

dissolve

clear

                                        irresolute
She wants to be born

be      to be nothing more

but the ochre sand ogre devours her word
The breath of Woman

Eve without lips      without a mouth

under the gag

hardly squeezes out tiny sniffles by my head

sizzling in the light of cistus and iodine 


Coiled in the dunes’ hollow

nose on the damp sand just under

tufts of sedge

as if coiled in an armpit      its mineral scent

intense and faded in memory

rough animal and scouring caress
I know that She is breathing

us      sour laughing 
I scurry down the side of Sand

and the dune collapses moved by its own dry foam
I scurry down from the dune’s bosom

and my hand grazed on its barbed wire crown
                    bleeds a rusty colour on the bright

                    silica

                    crystal
I am Sand’s daughter

but the words

                    are mine
I cry

                                        I write

                                                                                Sand