from The Spring Flowers Own: “This unfinished business of my / childhood”
By Etel Adnan
This unfinished business of my
childhood
this emerald lake
from my journey’s other
side
haunts hierarchies of heavens
a palm forest
fell overnight
to make room for an unwanted
garden
ever since
fevers and swellings
turn me into a river
the streets were steep
winds were running ahead
of ships . . .
There was indeed the death of birds
the moon had passed away.
*
The morning after his death
pursuing him beyond his bitter end
his mother came to
his grave:
she removed his bones out of
their pattern
and ditched them into mud:
women came at night
and claimed Rimbaud their own
that night there was much
thunder it was awesome
*
Laurels and lilacs
bloom around my head
because I stood up to the sun
You see the Colorado River runs
between flowered banks
I repeat my journeys to seek the
happiness that overcame
your absence
I was happy not to love you anymore
until the sunset reached
the East
and broke my raft apart
there were other rivers underground
covered with dead flowers
it was cold it was cold yes it was
cold.
*
Under a combination of pain
and machine-gun fire
flowers disappeared
they are in the same
state of non-being
as Emily Dickinson
We the dead have conversation
in our gardens
about our lack of
existence.
*
The gardener is planting
blue and white
flowers
some angel moved in with me
to flee the cold
temperature on earth are
rising
but we wear upon us some
immovable frost
everyone carries his dying as
a growing shadow.
*
I left the morning paper
by the coffee cup
the heat was 85 like the
year
and I went to the window to find
that flowers had bloomed overnight
to replace the bodies
felled in the war
the enemy had come with fire
and ruse
to stamp the names of the dead
in the gardens of Yohmor
It is not because spring
is too beautiful
that we’ll not write what
happens in the dark.
*
A butterfly came to die
between two stones
at the foot of the Mountain
the mountain shed shadows
over it
to cover the secret of
death.
*
Copyright Credit: Etel Adnan, from “The Spring Flowers Own" from The Spring Flowers Own & The Manifestations of the Voyage. Copyright © 1990 by Etel Adnan. Reprinted by permission of Post-Apollo Press.
Source: The Spring Flowers Own & The Manifestations of the Voyage (The Post-Apollo Press, 1990)