6/17/08

Eve


The heavens weep for me. Their tears trudge this muddied earth.
The forests mourn for me, sighing; their subtle groans send fractures
through the air, gathering in hollow caves, crying.
My young heart is like acidic ink, it drips and spreads within me,
it stains my fingers and my feet, it disgraces my face; it has polluted my name.
I am drowned in my sorrow. And this sorrow- it haunts the corners of the
earth. It drags itself to the side of the seas, throwing itself in, searching for
peace, for concord- but, the oceans spit it out. And so it crawls to the mountains
and hides itself in the crevices of the cliffs, crying.

It lives. It cannot be redeemed by any hand of man or smote by the breath
of any creature. It lives within me, this guilt, this daily bread of blinking death.
I wash it from my hands, but the inky blackness swims through my veins.
I throw it from my body, but it clings to me; it cannot be pried, it cannot be bribed.
I am the typography of self satisfaction and self ruination. I am a painted portrait
of destruction. I wish I could obliterate that portrait, but it hangs for public display
and all eyes see it. Some who stare at it with glazed eyes, smile- yet tears fall down
their faces. They don't understand- yet they mourn. Those eyes should mourn
for themselves and not for me. For my nameless grief has overflown from my body
and seeps into this mortal sand, pervading the pores of the air. My pain is a havoc
to the world. All who breathe this air and walk this sand become like me.

And so the heavens weep for you also. Their tears trudge this muddied earth.
The valleys utter groans and the trees whisper their great sadness. The birds
of the air sing their songs, crying.


1 comment:

Joshua Keel said...

Holly, I think about the ideas you've presented in this poem a lot. In fact, I've been thinking of how to express in song some of the seemingly unspeakable feelings that I have about life and love and sorrow and the pain of a cursed life and grace that stops the bleeding but leaves the bullet inside the flesh. It's frightful, what we've done to ourselves. Thank God for a hope of a new Eden.