NAYMAN
Let me say nay
to all patterns
linking birth to death,
sleep to a thousandth life.
Let me say nay
to the scissors of the clock
cutting to sunder
at a second’s stroke.
Let me say nay
to her who’d mark me
in her book of hours,
unman me in some fashioned place
without grass,
without the blinding sun
to burn my loins
alive.
Let me say nay
to the return of comets,
the fixed turn of sky;
hold back the waving
flurry of the spray,
the cyclic fall of leaves
and burst of seeds.
Let me say nay
to my old foe
I wrestle with
from cock’s crow
to knell of bell
clappering at the croak
of sun
and quartering
of the madman moon.
Let me say nay
to the scythy
slicing of the days,
take his grinning skull
and split him up a tree,
duel with the guarding sword,
walk through the fire unscorched
and over the ice stretch
from Eden to the end of days
and blast the phoenix
back to flight.
Stanley H. Barkan |
