a field in which opposites attempt a body

Make of me a glass and through it this kiss. One bends her neck, blue-white into his, pale against the dark field above him, to pierce the edge of that night. Another, below her, reaches for where the light ends, the craning neck, the body a dark field beneath it. Wing tip.

The cold outside, the dark. Inside, these brightly colored forms. Swirl now. Spread. This is an opening. Now an egg petal. Now what are these shapes. Is this the moon? Whispers, how does it mean. Someone suggests religion. It is years before Kandinsky.

What radiates from this. What broke its wings for this landing. Say it is a swan. Say it is light. Dark. Say there is before this blue-footed white feathered swan, another. Say this other, black-feathered on yellow feet, is reaching. Up to pierce the light that shows his dark. That the other reaches down. That the tip of their wings touch, and their beaks. What night is this through which the white swan reaches.

One body running in paint. Show me the next. Another body. I have not cried. Yet this week. Cannot turn my head. Backache, shoulders pinioned in firelight. I lay this dark head on the ground. Then breathe. Watch my breathing. As though by watching I could move its hush to cool that sparking fire. Breathe, then. Turn the neck. Watch sparks click again.

I will give. This fire an offering to that swan. Present this fire as the site on which this body may be offered up. Take it, then. O light. What are you? Speak.

Now with another. Trace where she had been. Her body unfeathered now. The smooth wear of this skin. The jagged edges of old scars now striped into the wear lines. I want to change what I am seeing. I feel this next war changing me. I am wanting. To make some alterations first. What sky against what day. What body now in rubble. What in the decorated tomb. What body armed, who bleeds. What unmoved will make what of the body now seated with a pen. For tracing feathers on the wings of birds. Who listens now for birds in this silence. Over the machine, a high round melody. Looping. Something loose. In the machine where the bird might. See it.

***

Inspired by The Swan, No. 17 (1915)