There Is a Birdsong at the Root of Poetry
For Ann Lauterbach
Hemmed in by an un-
tenable image:
feathers planted
below fragile branches
of avian feet scaly crossroads scoring
a particular blue of sky
offending
through the uselessness of misplaced
forms thorny prongs
that make no sense (and yet belong)
on the ground
out of which
the bird wings stiffly jut
rigid as
rhubarb leaf.
Should you
kneel the body's aged mechanism
beneath the shade of dry feathers,
should you
angle the vulnerable cavern
of ear—trembling passage to psyche's
failures our fall
into suffering knowledge—toward the root
should you
listen you will hear
the wasted strains of an underground song
rising from the muffled beak: site of a perverse smothering
throated core submerged
deadened by thoughtless depths
but alive
for the dead have kept it
safe from false music
a ghoulish guard of LOVE
SAFE from
Psyche
she who
bullied by the cruelty of others
the sophistication of fashionable libraries
the envy of those
who would molest the world into false confessions
and banish all mystery
with their dripping
candles she who would
unearth the birdsong to cage it
she who will end by destroying what she loves most.
Shhhh, quiet
listen:
it is drawn by other amblers
its strains awake in our attentions
as a sudden bewildering happiness
ear wedded to earth, listen
and hear
what those who know all
can not.
Copyright Credit: Jennifer Moxley, "There is a Birdsong at the Root of Poetry" from The Open Secret. Copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Moxley. Reprinted by permission of Flood Editions.
Source: The Open Secret (Flood Editions, 2014)