The Body is the Victory and the Defeat of Dreams

The body is the Victory of dreams
when shameless as water
it rises from slumber
its pock marks, its scars
such signs still asleep
its dark olive groves
in love,
cool to the hand.

The body is the Defeat of dreams
spread out long and empty
(if you shout, you hear my echo)
with its anemic tiny hairs
unloved by time
wounded, sobbing
hating its own motion
its original black color
fades steadily
when it wakes it clasps its bag
hanging on to pain for hours
in the dust.

The body is the Victory of dreams
when it puts one foot in front of the other
and gains a certain ground.
A place.
With a heavy thump.
Death.
When the body gains a place
in the town square
after death
like a wolf with a burning snout
it howls “I want it”
“I can’t stand it”
“I threaten—I revolt”
“My baby is hungry.”

The body gives birth to justice
and its defense.
The body creates the flower
spits out the death-pit
tumbles over, takes flight
spins motionless around the cesspool
(the world’s motion)
in dreams the body triumphs
or finds itself naked in the streets
in pain;
it loses its teeth
shivers from love
breaks its earth open
like a watermelon
and is done.

Penelope Says
            And your absense teaches me
            what art could not
                        Daniel Weissbort

I wasn’t weaving, I wasn’t knitting
I was writing something
erasing and being erased
under the weight of the word
because perfect expression is blocked
when the inside is pressured by pain.
And while absence is the theme of my life
--absence from life—
tears and the natural suffering
of the deprived body
appear on the page.

I erase, I tear up, I stifle
the living cries
“Where are you, come, I’m waiting for you
this spring is not like other springs”
and I begin again in the morning
with new birds and white sheets
drying in the sun.
You will never be here
to water the flowers
the old ceiling dripping
under the weight of the rain
with my personality
dissolving into yours
quietly, autumn-like…
Your choice heart
--choice because I have chosen it—
will always be elsewhere
and I will cut
with words
the threads that bind me
to the particular man
I long for
until Odysseus becomes the symbol of Nostalgia
sailing the seas of every mind.
Each day
I passionately forget you
that you may be washed of the sins
of fragrance and sweetness
and finally all clean
enter immortality.
It is a hard and thankless job.
My only reward is that I understand
in the end what human presence is
what absence is
or how the self functions
in such desolation, in so much time
how nothing can stop tomorrow
the body keeps remaking itself
rising and falling on the bed
as if axed down
sometimes sick, sometimes in love
hoping that what it loses in touch
it gains in essence.

From The Scattered Papers of Penelope. © 2009 by Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke. All rights reserved.