ENDANGERED SPECIES
(after Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni)
Delicacy
feather touch on
the wet block
the schooled brushstroke
black ink coats
the color of mourning
curves are drawn to embrace
the names of the condemned.
Ceremony is not forgetfulness
ceremony does not efface
the odor of bamboo
in my unforgotten garden
my private woods weeks away
up a river remembered as brushstrokes
art untouchable.
Charged to maintain this library
of one and others,
I inscribe unlucky men seized by love
or lust (it is all one)
whose blood burns
before it flows.
Their blood carries me, gentle lapping
deceptive as the song of water
my punishment and prayer for release.
When will I see my home again?
KW/6-7-09
[The sadism of bureaucracy from Act II, Scene 1, Puccini's *Turandot*,
as seen at the Washington National Opera, 5/24/09, the librettists
Adami & Simoni working from the original play by Carlo Gozzi, the
three ministers presented in the Serban production as masks and
acrobats, all charged with keeping the records of Princess Turandot's
murders, all longing for release and a return to their distant homes.]
--
Ken Wolman http://awfulrowing.wordpress.com/ http://www.petsit.com/content317832.html
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"All writers are hunters, and parents are the most available prey."--Francine du Plessix Gray
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