Anenome

Unknown

Anenome

In the meadow the anemone

is creaking open to the dawn.

By noon, the sky’s polyphony

will flood her white lap till she drowns.

The tiny muscle in her star

is tensed to open to the All,

yet the daylight’s blast so deafens her

she barely heeds the sunset’s call

or finds the willpower to refurl

her petal-edges – her, the power

and will of how many other worlds.

In our violence, we outlive her.

But which new life will see us flower

and face the skies, as true receivers?

Rilke

“The sky’s polyphony.” I had to look that up to make sure I had it right. Polyphony = ‘the style of simultaneously combining a number of parts, each forming an individual melody and harmonizing with each other”. So does that make the anenome like an open ear? Is she listening to the music of the spheres? Rilke calls her a star, so that makes her an earth-star receiving messages from a sky-star. And though delicate, she takes everything in, something we “in our violence” don’t do though we outlive her. The thing that speaks to me most is the question whether we also can flower and become “true receivers.” It's against our nature to receive. We want to act, accomplish, conquer – hence our “violence”. But the anenome shows us that a life of beauty, though breathtakingly short and fragile, is in fully opening ourselves, listening, and receiving. Can we do it? Rilke doesn’t know.

 

Bad Sheep

Hendrik Kerstens

Bad Sheep

Midnight’s merely blue,

but me, me, me, I’m

through

and through

sloe, cracked soot-

on-a-boot,

nicotine spat, licorice whip.

You can scratch, scratch, scratch

but I stay underskin true

to ebony, ink, crowberry, pitch;

hoist me up by my hooves

and shake till I’m shook, I’m still

chock full of coke, fuliginous

murk.

O there’s swart in my soul,

coal by the bag,

cinders and slag,

scoriac grit, so please

come, comb

through my fleece with hands pallid

as snow and watch

how they grow tarry, raven,

stygian, ashed—

or, if you wish, clean me with bleach

I won’t

flinch, just char

down to a core of caliginous

marrow,

pure carbon, atramentous,

utterly piceous,

shadowed, and starless,

each clumpity clump

and eclipse of my heart raptly

re-burnishing

a woolgather dark.

Hailey Leithauser


"Fuliginous murk"! That's fantastic. If you're going to take a look at the dark side (seeing as it's Halloween), then this is the way to do it - witty wordplay. Leithauser certainly brings out the joy in words. It's hard to be depressed when you are so intricately gothic and picturesque about your evil self. This seems like it might be a good way to crawl out of the hole, in fact. Maybe that's what writers do, keep themselves afloat on a raft of words.