Cleansing Verse from Geoffrey O'Brien

Okay, just an excerpt

1.

They search out new regions of muteness.

The sound the wind makes
as it rips among the hollows

they organize into a dialect.

Always where they have found nothing
they place a stone to mark the spot.

2.

If a shaft of light broke into a thousand pieces
and each piece into a thousand more,
might not a stranger
mistake any of the fragments for the original light?


Am I not such a stranger,
and if so
how can I speak of light or its origins?

What I have taken for light
may be something entirely different:
blood, or mire, or darkness itself.

3.

The spider's purity of intent.
the radiance of the design
its appetite makes.

4.

There was a king who commanded his subjects
to rebel against him,
upon penalty of death whether they obeyed or refused.

5.

Gold. A decayed residue of light
Bog creatures swarm to its glow.

In the phosphorescent dusk
they feed on the sun's excrement.

6.

The tongue has made a name for itself,
and seeks to declare independence from the mouth

It has 11 more sections and was published in Hambone in 1995.
Reading it removes the repiglican smell from the room.