Eurydice’s Hairpin. Cassandra’s Curse.

There are the names of wildflowers
that come out just at night,

Each night the dairyman her husband
sinks like a hoof
in the muck of his sleeping,

I have always considered it bad policy to land on my head. I try my best to avoid doing so. The head is just not structured to bear the weight of the body, or to withstand more than an occasional semi-violent thump. The soles of the feet, on the other hand, manage this quite well. I have jumped from a few moving vehicles in my day, and let me tell you, the head is just a frightened onlooker in such instances.

One fine morning in a bright green garden, an old man sat crying. His beard wound round him like a friendly serpent. The big sky was so blue, and the little birds singing. The smiling sun cast warm nets over him, as the gentle breeze did blow. The old man looked up. His eyes were so red from crying. I want! I want! he cried in his old broken voice.

Once upon a time
in the village of Stara
Zagora, Mikhail Drogzenovich,

Sheet-monger, blanket-hoarder,
wool gatherer of nightmares,
wrapped in white linen like a corpse,

Sun guzzles quick down August’s throat.

Je fais ce que je peux.
Which is to say, midwinter
and poems are as difficult as flowers.

Nature must prick us with her courages also. —Vita Sackville-West

Mad March dreams
of crane flowers,
birds of paradise.
Strelitzia reginae a deft cut
of bird and flower.

Each day the light diminishes earlier. Colors at dusk are softer with an
opulence they lack under full sun. My eyes strain with the beautiful, painful
squint. My wax flowers, my painter’s palette—a floral encaustic! The papery
papavers are waxy in the frigid morning air, but by noon I can see my fingers
through them, fluttering, a swim of color, red under red.