'if' ..

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

Trojan Women

Trojan Women

Strips of cloth that bind us
around woulds and mounds of flesh
of the dead and living
like mummies in a womb
faceless voices to the sea
bits of earth in our nails
as we wrap our grief
mothers sisters daughters
leaving ruins of the city
rituals saving our souls.

Hecuba	Andromache
Ashes to ashes soil in tongue taste of Troy mourning the dead digging the graves of men while daughters and sisters wrestle with the demons found in obedience and duty and place lost in the landscape of his story visions of water washing over rock	Water wrapping, lapping your lips cold as rock hard hands clap you back to the living chasms of holy fire around you shrouded limbs too numb to feel the space between child and grace

Leaving

ask for me tomorrow
invisible behind a mask
digging for relics of what was
beneath the clay
that lays dried
mosaic bits of bones
I swallow with waves
of water on a ship
singing of rocks
leaving Troy

:: note :: . . . the journal writing of a student while working on scene from Gwendolyn McEwen's translation of The Trojan Women . . .

10:48:22 PM