The Threshing Floor, and: Work Song (3): Not Until the Day's Work Is Done
Rent from DeepDyve- The Threshing Floor, and: Work Song (3): Not Until the Day's Work Is Done
The Threshing Floor
This light and darkness in our chaos join'd,What shall divide? The God within the mind.
Extremes in Nature equal ends produce,In Man they join to some mysterious use
alexander pope
You now know there is more than mereritual—To separate the chaff from the wheatOrnan the Jebusite declareda purifying spacethen sold it to Davidwho poured many a blood sacrificebefore his son Solomonerected a temple with two brass pillars as guardsone pregnant with secrets
The day I stepped on holy groundmy shoes not shodwhen light came pouring from the windowas if midnight were noonNo birds no winged trumpetersjust the center of me in MiamiI had myself to make into mannaI washed my hands and quietly ate like it was my last prayerI poured a libation on the mosaic floor of love and decayTo walk from the outsidewhere words misstep on the moist surface [End Page 22] tongues waggle with the gossip of chainsTo walk into the flood of yourselfyour eye slicing again through skinto separate raiment from ragsknowledge from idols
You wake with the Sun aspicture of God on your wallYou sleep with a picture ofGod on your wall as MoonThankful of your molten sweat forgingdrop by drop brasswisdomThankful you are their childyour legs made of night and dayyour body donned with tattered cloth of travelers
Work Song (3): Not Until The Day's Work Is Done
Dew wakes the three-fingered cotton leafI enter barefoot a sacred spaceface the relentless fact I must donthe checkered cloth travelers wearI stand again at the junction where two inevitably meet—there is nothing here but the red dust of journeys
Not until I could quietly plead my case in a shrine of seedsthat I heard strange gossip in my voicethe perpetual narrativelike wild parrots who cackle in flightNot until the food that is prayer personified settles in a brass bowl [End Page 23]
Years ago I swore not to stammernot to rest on a fallen teak trunkNot until the iron I forged into golden knifesliced my throat from ear to earNot until I heard the melody of rebirth
and I could eat what was mineNot until I bathed with the dew of cottonI heard the splash of a voicenot mine but not another's [End Page 24]
Adrian Castro is a poet, performer, and interdisciplinary artist. Born in Miami, he has a Caribbean heritage that has provided fertile ground for the rhythmic Afro-Caribbean style in which he writes and performs. He is the author of Cantos to Blood & Honey (Coffee House Press), Wise Fish (Coffee House Press 2005), and Handling Destiny (Coffee House Press 2009) and has been published in several literary anthologies, including Conjunctions, Paper Dance: 55 Latino Poets, Little Havana Blues, A Century of Cuban Writers in Florida, Step into a World: A Global Anthology of New Black Literature, and Renaming Ecstasy: Latino Writings on the Sacred. He is the recipient of a USA Knight Foundation Fellowship, a Cintas Fellowship, State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship, the nalac Fund for the Arts Individual Fellowship, and the Eric Mathieu King Fund award from the Academy of American Poets. Castro is also a boardcertified doctor of acupuncture and Oriental medicine, herbalist, and Babalawo.
