At The Edge of Obsidian
AT THE EDGE OF OBSIDIAN
A book of Hours
Oaxaca, Mexico
This collection is dedicated
to absent friends.
Among them:
Prof. Geoffrey Stagg
who invited me to Canada;
Maricarmen and Hayden
who will always enlighten
my memories of Oaxaca;
Evelyn Sweezey,
Fenton Burke, Jurgen Doerr,
Oscar Brown, and Richard Costelloe:
we were all in the same boat.
6:00 AM
church bells
1
The alarm clock shuffles
its pack of sleeping hours:
a clicking of claws,
needles knitting outwards
towards dawn’s guillotine;
a knife edge
sharpened on this keening wind
sets my blood tingling in my toes.
Bright jungle parrot,
its querulous caged voice glimpsed
darkly through dawn’s looking glass.
2
Tochtli was caught by the ears
then thrown against the second sun
sizzling in the sky.
His sharp teeth burrowed,
burying themselves deep in the fire’s red light.
The second sun turned into the moon;
now we can see tochtli’s face,
simmering in its dwindling pool.
Old myths, like languages,
grow legs and wander away.
They gather in quiet corners,
in village squares
where the night wind weaves
dry leaves in endless figures of eight.
The old man dreams of white rabbits,
running down tunnels, escaping the hunter’s hands.
3
When old dreams vanish,
they back themselves into a cul-de-sac:
a wilderness of harsh black scars.
Dream words: scalpels carving
red slashes on white-washed walls,
trenchant shadows, twisted dancers,
old warrior kings
bent into pipe wire shapes.
Suddenly, beneath the balcony,
the handy man
tumble-dries a tv ad
in the washing machine
of his song sparrow throat.
6:30 AM
Early morning mass: San Pedro
1
Swiftly, a single beam descends:
sharp blade of a heliocentric sword
shattering the chapel’s chunk of onyx
into tiny chips of stunned stain glass.
A pallid lily truncated
by the dawn’s pearly light,
the young widow kneeling;
her head soon to be haloed,
lassoed in a noose of sunlight.
Santiago de Compostela,
la Puerta de la Gloria,
pilgrim palms merge with the granite
forcing their fingers into the stone.
Flesh clutches the statue’s marble hand:
amazing maze of human veins,
petrus / piedra / Pedro,
encrypted in this church’s rock.
2
Outside the church door,
her young son pierces his lips
with a cruelty of cactus.
His warm blood spurts,
then cools, in the sacrificial bowl.
Beside him, his sister
carries on her head a basket
filled with flowers and heavy stones.
Her brother will walk bedside her,
until the hours finally weigh
and force her to lay her burden down.
When the stones beneath her feet grow tongues,
will they speak the languages in which she dreams?
7:00 AM
Breakfast
1
Yesterday, I sacrificed a chicken.
Unborn, it lay within its calcium cocoon, dormant,
a volcano sleeping deep beneath thick snow.
Tap, tap tap: the silver spoon bounces off the ovoid head.
Suddenly, there is a crack, and a spurt of orange blood.
Today, I tap with my silver spoon on the grateful
grapefruit’s papal skull to see
if the fruit is actually dead.
Silence. There is no movement
within the honeyed comb of pith and cell.
High in the church tower, a hammer blow
falls on an echoing anvil.
The cracked bell lurches into speech.
Rooster crows his thick rich cocoa rico:
blackened torsos and fire-roasted beans.
2
Squeezed orange, racked by the inquisitioner,
its pale yellow robe spent and exhausted;
wasted disc of a worn-out, decadent moon.
What pale lantern wastes its life across a tabloid sky?
Naturaleza muerta: the orange expiring on the table,
its carcass still sticky, its life blood a sacrifice:
thick, rich, golden liquid, as fierce and sweet
as sunshine on a branch.
Tabled motion: my hand reaches out.
Arthritic fingers clasp, but cannot hold
the iced fruit juice.
Mescal is sometimes necessary at this time of day.
Grasshoppers fried in garlic no longer make me squirm.
The tequila’s wrinkled worm tickles my fancy.
8:00 am
Up and about
1
The sky is a sharp blue guillotine,
poised between buildings.
Wide-open butterfly eyes.
Scorched circles of admirers
burning holes in the crowd’s
dark climacteric face.
Will somebody today be chosen?
Sun-polished marimbas.
A street musician stands in the shade
playing a bamboo danse macabre.
A heart of fire burns in an iron barrel.
2
Last night, when the Castillo
towers tumbled down,
an avalanche of flame
flooded the cathedral wall.
A black wooden bull
danced in the square,
sparks struck fire in his horse-hide hair.
The red speck on my shirt
burnt right through to my skin.
Now I want to walk on spotless snow;
I want to listen to a lone dog
howl on the beach at Alma.
Low tide,
gulls and the wave edge at a distance,
one cold morning in December.
3
When the north wind whistles,
black crows bristle over my roof
and whisk themselves away.
Star-frosted air.
Pinions strain and lift;
feathers catch at the light’s bright edge
and blaze with early morning fire.
Claw to claw, tumbling
down a ladder of sky,
sharp caws, rowing
against the day’s crass tide.
9:00 AM
Memories
1
Last summer’s leaves are locked in ice.
Sun-warmed at the edges,
they outline themselves:
fragile patterns frilled against thin snow.
I have forgotten how to walk in the woods.
I have forgotten how the dead
leaves separate from the trees and tumble
earthwards in their longing to be free.
Silence of frost:
excrescence of icicles
thrusting crystal tongues upwards,
speaking fragmented words
from earth’s deep bowels.
2
Frail old men, huddled in wool blankets.
Each face a note book seamed with memories.
This brisk sun wrinkles their haunted visages,
paints them like their ancestors:
Ocho Venado, Eight Deer, painted on a restaurant wall,
Cuáthemoc remembered on a hunded peso bill.
Códice characters lifted from the pages
of their pre-Columbian chronicles
and drawn back into modern life.
Crab apple faces hastening to autumnal crispness.
Fresh ink prints on the snow of an unturned page.
Each limb bursting, unwieldy, back into bloom,
flower by unyielding flower.
3
At Santo Domingo,
life’s gold and white tree
stands guard with its army of sharp
tongued leaves, names
flourished like spears.
This fountain of youth,
gold waters, green leaves,
sparkles with sunshine;
roots sprout from a pot of gold:
uplifting a rainbow roof
spread below paradise.
The warrior bird, colibri,
whirrs his wings and charges.
Twin windmills, sun-dog ear-rings,
draw circles round the sun.
10:00 AM
Beyond the balcony
1
brightly feathered angels
sitting at paradise’s door
green and yellow
mocking his master
the parrot
burnishing the morning
preening his feathers
by the light of the grape-
fruit’s yellow sun
2
poised on a sunbeam
colibri’s warrior soul
whirls sad worlds away
the lemon tree leans over to listen
glistening pearls of dew
embellish the morning’s throat
the church towers
strong when terra firma shakes
stand insubstantial in shimmering air
peeled paint flakes
from temple domes
ochre and bare
3
The parrot puffs up his feathers and swells in his cage,
like a rainbow of quills.
Someone has taught him how to swear;
on rainy days, grey skies turn blue with his rage
until the maid covers him with a blanket. Chinga!
Red blood melts its sealing wax on the hibiscus.
The bougainvillea strains sharp stains through a lonesome slice of sunlight.
Last night, the stars paced slowly round.
They aped some ancient village dance and proudly pranced,
heads held high, like performing ponies.
Peonies were as sharp as sequins in my lady’s locks.
La Virgen de la Soledad had diamonds strewn across her gown and hair.
Lady beyond compare, she stood motionless in the cathedral square,
at midnight, until the tianguitzli came down and nestled in her braids.
At school break, the puzzle man twists his wire into shapes:
the kangaroo, the space man, the crowd of children:
open mouths, empty pockets, staring owl eyes.
4
When I go out to buy mescal, they offer me no worms.
“Three, for five pesos!” the old lady says. Dark is her shop.
I buy two litres of white mescal, cheap and rough, without the second brewing.
Six worms I buy, seis gusanos that lie in the bottom of a two litre
plastic bottle of Coke, sealed with cellophane, and a rubber band.
At the market, I also buy roses.
At home, I put them in a vase, and I watch them watching me.
Red roses: fingernails of brightness,
bloodstains scratching against a white-washed wall.
Misshapen pearls in a ceramic prison, their beauty breaks me down:
decimated words born from mescal.
The eye you see is not an eye because you see it …
twin light brown ovals, floating in a liquid mirror.
11:00 AM
Baños en Oaxaca
1
I have never been to a public baths before. At the door they sell me
a bar of soap and a ticket for the little man who will beat my body.
I undress. Nobody has told me whether or not to wear any clothes.
Do I go naked into this dark night? Against all odds, I wear my shorts
nor shall my towel stray from my hand. The steam soaks everything.
Fundy on a misty day could scarcely be as dark. I cannot see a thing.
I move to the voices: two men, together, they move apart. I wonder
what they are doing. They speak. Their voices sound inviting but
I cannot understand their words. Turista, they say. And go back
to whatever they were doing. It is dark. I don’t know what to do.
I clasp my towel around me. Someone calls out my name and I move
to another room. A brown man, totally naked, looks me over and frowns.
I am as white as white can be and dark as dark is he. Steam rises. He points.
I strip naked and lie on the marble slab. Incense invades my brain. Water
overflows. My abandoned flesh releases itself to cauterizing currents
of earth and air. Eyes closed, drowsing, I douse in golden rivers of grief.
2
a Don Quijote made from scrap metal sits on
the reinforced toe of a workman’s boot
his body is made from two spent spark plugs
he lectures me on the ages of gold and silver long since past
we are left he says with this age of recycling
shadows pass beneath the arches of the zócalo
they walk in and out of carved glass cathedral doors
wary of shade and flame and flickering candles
they stand in a dust-laden beam of sunlight
chiaro oscuro games of light and dark
alebrijes with their staring eyes
wagging tails protruding tongues
their spirits slowly emerging through the wood
3
My neighbour has six cats, two children, and a tulipán tree.
I buy his youngest daughter chocolate and she shows me
how to play a simple game of cards. But the cards are different,
and I lose. She laughs and calls me tonto / stupid. She is ten.
Nochebuena, single and double petals, crimson and cream;
cempasúchiles, flowers of the dead, guiding their footsteps
and leading our lost ones back to us.
I think of bottles placed on a concrete step.
When we go out in the morning, sparrows have pecked
the silver tops to get at the cream. Memories: once open
doors now slowly closing. Keys that no longer turn in the locks.
Sleep gathering in forgotten rooms, falling like dust on silken flowers.
Back on the azotea, my mind drifts in and out of sun and clouds.
12:00 PM
Mass in the Consolación
1
This is not a normal church. The lady in front of me opens
her blouse and offers her breast to her youngest child who
sucks there, greedily. The old man at the back holds a roll
your own smoke in the palm of his hand and closes his eyes
in ecstasy as he draws in the drug, holding it between tongue
and teeth. Three dogs, tongues lolling, have just discovered
the bitch in heat who came here for sanctuary. They chase her
up and down the aisle as the high priest doggedly murmurs
the blessings that uplift faithful hearts. I have heard these words
before; and all this music. Bored acolytes pass the anointing oil,
present the sacred wine. Flowers and candles adorn the altar.
When the old man kneels for communion, night
breath lies whiskey thick on the high priest’s tongue.
2
Sacred words, secret worlds opening like oysters;
a laying on of hands; footsteps leading nowhere .
Seculae seculorum: that hard, crisp sound, white
and sharp, like the inside of an apple when strong
teeth penetrate the outer skin. Candle flames caress
the unwary, bringing an artificial peace. Yellow
light marches across the altar. The room warms up
with song. Wide open staring eyes. That young man
nailed to his wooden frame, and calling me by my
name. A rebounding pinball, my live-wire mind,
trapped by the ring-master in this unforgiving circus.
3
The boy on the cross has the wide open,
jewel eyes of a flayed Mexican god,
living forever, and never quite dead.
Black blood flows down the carved wooden face,
a river of coal dust waxed with carmine;
human hair, coffee coloured skin,
the heavy smell of burnt copal.
Five hundred years of split tongues whisper
their multi-lingual tale of a golden-haired god
walking out from the sunrise.
Trapped beneath sultry snow,
the nearby volcano throws up lava and ash.
1:00 PM
water
1
Cupped hands cannot embrace you.
Do you remember when the earth
was without form, and darkness lay
on the face of the deep?
You yearned then to be released,
to flow from the darkness,
to flower in the sunlight.
2
Images and symbols:
flags flying within my skull.
The shrunken head pond
ringed like a bath tub;
fields scorched and dry.
The land’s parched throat
longing for liquid:
water, born free,
yet everywhere in chains.
This mirage of palm trees,
green, against burning sand.
This hot sun dragging
its blood red tongue
across a powder blue sky.
Panting for water, I lick my lips
like a great big thirsty dog.
3
Worlds begin with the “Let be!” of light --
as it divides from darkness.
Then comes the world,
the inner waters in which male
and female forms are borne;
when the waters break,
the life sustaining substance drains away,
throwing us from dark to light.
The mid-day sun rides the sky
rolling its dark ball-turret cherry:
blood red wine over and under
this double-barreled cloud.
2:00 PM
in the zócalo
1
Three brujas:
one spins the yarn,
one measures the cloth,
one wields the black obsidian knife,
trimming each tiny thread.
Infinitesimal clockwork figures
balancing on wool,
their mouths opening
and closing, silent, like goldfish.
Wooden teeth comb each thread,
the shuttle always moving,
weaving whose fate?
Interlaced castillos,
scintillating cities,
grecas floating lighter
than this relámpago
lightening the air.
2
Or you can start with the glow-
worm of a match – luciérniga,
Lucifer – the bringer of light.
High flames flickering
on zopilote’s wings
bring an end to darkness.
Women at their chimeneas
breathe fire into shavings,
a red glow into charcoal,
flame into fire hungry bark.
Watch the new life kindle the clouds,
the new day walking its plank of fire.
Your shadow on the wall:
a new star rising
among star-crossed generations.
3:00 pm
bag lady
1
Barefoot over dust and stones
she strays through gaps in the cactus fence;
is she then a beast of burden?
What does she carry in her plastic bags?
Mysteries are stitched between the lines
and ploughed into the wrinkled scars of her face.
Dainzú -- on a path through an open field
she throw stones at scrawny cattle
and slant eyed dogs.
Dust and shadows of dust.
So much sand sifted through the hands.
How can anyone so distant
hear and understand
the meaning of these words?
2
When I visit his grand-mother’s house,
it is deserted. Weed-filled walls,
empty houses, ruined fields.
Who scratched this name letter by letter?
On the roadside stone, there’s an arrow
and a flowering heart carved into a cross:
el corazón del pueblo.
Thin cattle, wary of this white man
and his fist full of stones,
turn peremptory pointed horns
towards the tourist.
Bared teeth; the herdsman’s dog
wears a lean and hungry look.
The rock freed from the fist
booms like a drum stroke.
4:00 pm
siesta
1
Sweet wet bark bleeds until sack-
cloth binds the wounded rowan.
Claws trapped in the sacking, the sap-
sucker family points accusatory beaks.
They have fluffed up their feathers.
Red beads on the mountain ash: the young girl
offers me a rosary of bright red berries.
Bitter on the tongue,
sunset’s first flourish tinting my dream..
2
Tochtli gnaws at the moon’s white skull.
Murciélago exits his cave with night
tightly wrapped beneath his wings.
Tezcatlipoca: a stone knife in an iron hand.
At the cathedral’s shallow edge,
the golden tree bends like a rainbow,
exposing its roots as the end draws near.
Cycle upon cycle: dead men’s gifts,
these spirits walking over night’s waters.
The dream cat’s round green eye
staring out of the window,
willing this willow pattern world
to end its cat and mouse game:
darkness within darkness.
5:00 PM
home thoughts
1
Nochebuena / Christmas Eve:
last year, a star fell down the chimney
and landed on the poinsettia.
The cat and the dog stood up to deliver
new versions of their Christmas vision.
Birch bark: ghosts on the snow bank turned
white in the moonlight as they danced,
so slender and so bright.
An obsidian knife hacks through the mind
carving it into two uneven pieces.
Snowflakes invade its split personality.
Thin ice spread across glacial fires.
Incarcerated birds sing in the rib cage.
A child’s world: with its lost toy
buried beneath fresh snow.
2
Last night tears froze in my eyes
and fell to the earth as stars.
Now I am an enormous sunflower,
trapped in this wet clay rag of a body.
If I lie here in silence
will my world go on without me?
The bird of paradise opens his eye,
all querelous with sunshine,
and watches me waiting.
6:00 PM
The andador turístico
outside Hernán Cortés’s House
1
This far south, dark settles early on streets and squares,
shop windows are islands of brightness.
Mankind’s future cradled in the empty life raft of a crib,
waiting for midnight.
An opening door snaps a sudden match of light.
Tick of the death watch beetle
in a crumbling colonial house.
When I look at my watch,
the hands have turned into lifeless arrows.
Numbers dance the periphery of their silent circle:
a henge of black stones knitted in time with the stars.
2
The old sword sits outside its scabbard
and howls like a dog that scents a full moon.
Its long tusk dwells on forgotten blood:
dead flesh carved over rock and dry stone.
After the earthquake, the museums walls
are no longer upright.
A pendulum dropped from the edge of the roof,
swings for a while, then settles heavily:
a dead weight at the end of a noose.
Guns have blunted the sword’s edge.
Bereft of sharpness,
it lies confined in its coffin of rusty dust.
Washed of all numbers,
anonymous clocks wear Hallowe’en masks
to disguise the blankness of their faces.
A mantilla draws its black lace blind across the moon.
7:00 PM
Wingless in Gaza Street
1
amputees
they buzz an unending dance
in the dusty gutter
galley slaves
chained to broken oars.
they ply blunt stumps
rhythmically
shorn of strength and beauty
their once coloured shuttles
weave dark circles
my mouth is a full moon
open in a round pink circle
bone and its marrow
settle in subtle ice
2
futile fragility
of the demented heart
pumping its frequency
of fragmented messages
through panicked veins
frail beauty
torn from its element of air
this brightness of moths
drowning in the inky depths of the gutter
the seven o’clock news brought to you
from an otherwise deserted street.
8:00 PM
evensong
1
hide bound with wool
a red skein of blood
reels its life out
vein by vein
as he struggles in vain at the end
of his crimson lifeline
a weaver in the zócalo unthreads him
back at another loom he is woven into
a brand new patchwork pattern
now he marches– left – right -- left -- onwards
towards the black edge of the bruja’s brutal knife
tick – tock the key in his back
a time bomb waiting to explode
2
An overflowing river of rouge, a great red gong,
this plucked heart palpitating in the outstretched palm.
As orange as an orangutan, its pendulum, once shivering
from rib to rib, now spattering the worshipping crowd.
White birds gather piratical thoughts. Etiolated crossbones,
bleached skulls, avian blossoms, they fly home to roost.
Deep-pooled river of unsought sunshine, this leaf light flowing,
its tears torn from tresses and drifting to the ground.
Wild surge of the church bells, waving like blossoms
in the tower’s rocky cliff.
The cricket now activates its trigger of song:
bright flashes sound their sparks from tree to tree.
Soft flares this evening air,
this kingdom come, so soon to be upon us.
Thick with an anonymous flame,
the tongue you parrot is tied to its flesh bound cage.
9:00 PM
Mass in the courtyard on St. Cecilia’s Day
1
Straw in the manger
fine layers of sand with its silted sorrow
strewn across the yard
a dozen musicians playing the same traditional
salt and pepper tune over and over again
heavy dance steps and the hefty smell of copal
por todo mal mescal y por el bien también
tom thumb quantities in paper cups
burn like hot sunshine
a family mass without mescal is like a meal
without wine or a day without sunshine
candle light sputters half-remembered faces
the courtyard fills with ancestors and memories of loss
old names emerge their faces reappear
faded flowers gathering freshness in the evening’s gloom
2
Black blades, as sharp as grass,
readied for the sacrifice;
thin ribbons of blood;
the tongue slit open;
cactus piercing the lips;
a crown of thorns.
These stones so heavy
in their floral basket;
this moonbeam,
slipping its knife
between the ribs of
a vow to forget
and a memory that lingers.
3
standing on temple steps
moving among scrawny cattle
the people without shoes
their noses ears and lips pierced
with thorns drawn from cactus
eyes of Tlaloc
Tecolote beaked and ready
the hole in the sacrificial frog
filled with fresh blood
round bundles wrapped
and tied with large knots
icatz and a flowering cross
el corazón del pueblo
10:00 PM
alone at the table
1
Salt on the sea wind sifts raucous gulls in packs,
breeze beneath wings, looking for something
to scavenge. Seaweed. The tidemark filled with
longing. A grey sea crests and rises. Staring eyes:
stark simplicity of that seal’s head filling the bay.
Next day, his body stretched dead on the beach.
The river runs rocky beneath the covered bridge.
Campers have created eskimo men and women
by heaping stone upon stone. At low tide, on the dried
river bed, there is no easy way to say no. White horses
in the farrier’s forge stamp and surge. A cold wind
blows at Cape Enrage. Wolfe Point sees the autumn
gales transform the shape of the beach: the sandbar
carved like a Thanksgiving turkey, stripped to bare bone.
My eiderdown is stuffed with dull dry winter coats:
dead birds sacrificed, so I can lie here in comfort.
2
Gold and silver, the last breath going out of him,
this warrior destined to dance before a cruel sun.
His ultimate spoken threads, so delicate, so thin,
they run like blood and water. His pierced side
sorrowful beneath the spectators’ stare. Ice cold,
this water on which he no longer dares nor cares
to walk. Rich silk: this tapestry woven with another
man’s words. Ghosts shunt back and forth across the ice.
Late autumn mists confusing the paths, leading nowhere.
11:00 PM
The brujo calls it a day
1
This auriferous sky,
sewn with sharp sequins.
Is there a warp, the brujo asks,
a lurch towards meaning,
a leaning towards sun or moon?
When our footsteps were first planted
did they take root and grow
or did they wander, restless,
across the planet’s surface?
A rampant foot stands firm
on that first high rampart:
instant gratification,
timeless possession
of each passing cloud.
2
A rocket streaks upwards. Instant release
from the sender’s earthbound misery
or message of anguished joy?
Who is that knocking at heaven’s gate?
The low moon glows: lesser
incandescence of a departed sun.
A satellite cuts its razor edge,
slicing distant pin pricks of light.
The full moon rides her orange unicycle
across a thin black line of hill.
Here on the azotea midnight drags
the town back into its dark gray cape.
3
This zapotec measuring cloth,
this mixtec weaving wool,
this trique with her knife:
who will sever the artery
which binds us at obsidian’s
edge so close to the loom?
If their grief is our grief,
do we all then bleed in vain?
Nochebuenas, tulipanes,
flowers of every colour
pour from each opened vein.
12 AM
Envoi
1
Night’s incoming waves,
flickering candles,
yellow flames,
white altar table cloth
with its cross of flowers:
evensong: an ebb tide dangling its flotsam
at the end of a long white string.
Mala madre, the spider plant
abandoning its unwanted children.
I clasp your hand in a confessional of dust
and your fingers knit themselves with mine.
Each wrinkle is as fine as a silk spun web.
2
Yesterday
I tapped
with ardent spoon
on the graceless grapefruit’s
golden skull.
Tomorrow
I will boil us
each an egg.
Squeezed orange:
as warm as this fierce embrace,
as sweet as sunshine,
or moonlight,
or starlight;
silent bird
on its midnight branch.
