Reunion: Our Common Language
- Reunion: Our Common Language
What kind of poets have we become, to let Love dig up our language from its ground? Like epiphytes growing in the rainforest Canopy, roots drawing nourishment from air And rain, our letters bloomed with gorgeous air Plants (orchids for mystery! bromeliads for passion! Mosses for magic! ferns for wonder! and awe!)— The love we had abandoned all hope for, bewitching us Out of the craft we had lived so long to learn “We will lean into a circle of a raging mysteryand recognize it for its secret callings . . .” ”I’m on the verge of a cataclysm of passion with you . . . “
After all that, naked now of your October dress And my preacher’s suit, you can’t speak Any more than I, and in our eyes We see what simple words we lost, and why We stand here naked of our letters and can not speak.
This time we have chosen perfect bodies for each other
Even though you stand with your feet together, Sunlight, moonlight, starlight, lamplight Shine through the space where your thighs barely touch Then curve into their sweet pubic hollow. The hair there is backlit and haloed In the pocket of light you bring To where I kneel Before the miniature lamps, stars, moons, novas Shining through the cosmic arch in the middle of your body, Cupped by the softest flesh in the hollow of God’s hands. When we put all our tongues into all our mouths, Into that space where we come to earth again, The Word the light gives us is laughter, And its sound is prayer.
Gerald Barrax was Professor of English, Poet-in-Residence, and Editor of Obsidian at North Carolina State University at Raleigh. He is author of four volumes of poems, Another Kind of Rain, An Audience of One, The Deaths of Animals and Lesser Gods, and Leaning Against the Sun. In July, 1997, From a Person Sitting in Darkness: Selected and New Poems, his fifth volume, was published by the Louisiana State University Press. He has recently retired to West Chester, Pennsylvania.
