The Awakening Goddess
With sunrise she unpicks her secrets.
Aurora awakes,
the young goddess:
the world awakens in the sign of blood,
a wrathful goddess opens her eyes.
We are the convalescents of experience:
poets and women and strong men
who with huddled expectancy lie in wait for the first minute:
we greet the world’s dawns with the chants of those heading off to die.
Softly:
someone is dreaming us,
our beautiful woman-treasures,
our toylike doll-wars,
the clever sawdust in our heads!
Softly!
Our great ships swim for in her dream. A telephone rings.
A train rattles across the prairie. A motion picture rolls in Paris.
Couples unite in hotel rooms: the woman tears her hat off, her dress shreds,
hurry, this is happiness…The diplomat yawns, rubs his nape;
from the swooning blood of a woman a new human cries out. A dog barks;
a hunter contemplates the noontime vapours in the reeds. Kant writes the
Imperative,
Königsberg shakes from bombs. The past determines the future—
Someone screams: tragedy!
the mind responds: twice two is four!
the madman: I’m the king of Mars!
the king: , L’état, c’est moi!
the people: we are the power!
the philosopher: causes give birth to effects!
the love: someone’s upsetting me!
the poet: the world is harmony, this I believe!
Softly:
someone is dreaming us,
with sunrise she unpicks her wrathful secrets,
we’re the passing shades of her bad dream;
let’s not disturb the dreamer’s dream:
the world awakens in the sign of blood.
Someone asked me last week to describe the types of poems I like. My response: intense, hard hitting, memorable. Márai’s volume of poetry, The Withering World, suits me perfectly. (Thanks to literary Twitter’s @Unwise_Trousers for recommending this.)
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