Cosmos

17 September 2010

I am your beginning, but I am not your source.

You have given me movement, and your feet dynamises me in your rhythmic treading

and your flowing sadness,

your resting after each footfall,

re-membering all our strength for each next step.

I am your cloud, but I am not your thunder.

I too have been gathered into sound,

Idead into movement.

I am your bodies,

but even as I am your breath, I am not your breathing.

I know not whence we come.

I bear you, but I know not where we go.

My children,

Move your bodies and bear my memory.

Remember the silence and notice the shadows.

Embrace the passing of my cycles as they cleave your faces and slow your dancing.

But cease your clenching, and dance nevertheless.

Celebrate me in your aging and dying and disolving to dust.

Offer my song with gladness,

even if we know not why and to whom we sing.

For we are

You in me and I in you

But I am not all of you and you are more than only me.

Sing, then, of our moving the Silence into sound.

A nude by Edward Hopper – For Margaret Gaul

A poem by Lisel Mueller

The light
drains me of what I might be,
a man’s dream
of heat and softness;
or a painter’s
– breasts cozy pigeons,
arms gently curved
by a temperate noon.

I am
blue veins, a scar,
a patch of lavender cells,
used thighs and shoulders;
my calves
are as scant as my cheeks, my hips won’t plump
small, shimmering pillows:

but this body
is home, my childhood
is buried here, my sleep
rises and sets inside,
desire
crested and wore itself
thin
between these bones –
I live here.