A hole in the soul

Lie down honey,
while I pour in the honey.
We live in the circle
of sex love and money.
Write me, write me - enchantment.
A blue ship on a painted ocean.
Fly me to Uranus.
Sew up the hole and sing me a song
of forty thousand horsemen.
Plant me a forest of towering pines.
Sit me in a desert, for my nourishment
dates and cool water.
Bring a white hand that will lead
away from disorder.
Rain rain go away
bring back the solid grey -
and silver wings of shooting doves
and bees that spin in honey droves.
What is this life,
but a hole. Empty skies and paper people fly
past. I keep my stillness, arch bone with bone.
The present is a slim volume -
that tells time in words I do not understand.
There's a hole in my soul
none may fill.
I summon old gods and new
but they're away with rolling thunder on too distant hills.
I sleep with anachronisms. Yellow chrome is my colour.
The sleep of nightmares, is my dream time.
The city is a downed beast, weeping turgid tears
in rivers of brown on banks of yellow.
Sunday people stroke the waters with stumped oars.
They bleed their sorrow into one another.
Their comfort is the white walls of museums and galleries.
Their clothing is the company of wolves. They are unashamed.
Keep my soul, for tomorrow a new child will be born.
Somewhere in a land torn apart by the utterings of madmen.
In a quite room, shaded at noon, a dark haired woman
in a corner, will cry out her birth pangs.
In the wetness of hair, the pallor of skin, the arch of her back
there will be a renaissance. Light from a tiny attic window, high up
will thrust long bars of golden light. The room will glow like a grotto.
From her lips will flow, the old songs of the forest.
Wild woman knows.
Wild woman sees.
She is the harbinger for healing running sores and wounds.
My soul is clean. It is full and white and round like a new Moon.
It is clean. There is no hole in my soul.

(Acknowledgements: Published in Famous Reporter, n.26, January 2003.)

© Jenny Barnard