THE COMPLETION OF SHADOWS

1 3 9 R T H E C O M P L E T I O N O F S H A D O W S G . C . W A L D R E P Oh friends I am a prison to all that lies within me. It burns the way phosphorus burns. It bears the raven’s flag into the ragged country called by its natives Los Arpas. There I saw butterflies clustering at the torn throat of the fallen antelope which came to me later in a dream, and nourished me also with its flesh. In the bellows of my chest a golden chant was brewing like a cloud caught in a beautiful woman’s jewelry. And death what would you drink I asked of the body and its innumerable spirits. And death what would you ride I called into the red stable where I kept my sex among the blue wheat of the church’s gapped treasures. I was o√ered a living sprig from the temple gate and asked to plant it wherever I called home – now I call home the place where the living sprig tattoos the earth. I drink from it, as a sparrow from the glistening rock. There was an emperor, once, in the Book of the Martyrs; I returned his gaze. And I wore a strip of cloth around my biceps when I was a young man, for the sake of the beautiful – dawn stripped it from me. Now I see with the eyes of bread. And death answers I am afraid, I am so afraid, my little one. Don’t be frightened, I say, leading death into his narrow cell. I sing death a lullaby 1 4 0 Y amid the brightening bones, knowing that when death wakes he will recall his true love and leave me here, even as death’s guards pursue. I who also am a son of David, I who with lilac fletched my lover’s scar. ...