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Sirens and other poems

Duane Locke

A Hot January

First publication: December 2000

http://badosa.com/p070

SIRENS, SEA GULLS, MERMAIDS, AND OTHER DIVINTIES

Sea girls with whole human bodies,

Mermaids, human bodies above,

Fish bodies below, sing songs

That interrupt commerce,

Stop ships with cargoes,

Sing songs that excite sailors

To seek happiness

Rather than serve to make a profit

For some far-away, anonymous libertine.

So the few who control

The attitudes of the many

Label sea girls and mermaids,

Monsters.

TANDARADEI

According to Middle High German poets,

Nightingales sing varied songs,

Walter von der Vogelweide

Has the nightingale sing, “Tandaradei.”

I heard a nightingale sing in Rothenburg,

But could not transcribe the complex song into a single word.

We, a Slavic-Teutonic blonde and I,

Saw a flock of nightingales in the Moselle valley,

They fluttered on limbs of bushes growing out of a broken bridge.

We were drinking a dry white wine,

And the dry white wine sung, “Tandaradei.”

GO HOME TO YOUR TUTOR, DARKNESS

Go home before it gets too light,

If you don’t go home before the dark is gone,

The light will become so bright,

You will be lost in light.

If you stay in the light,

Not go home to a dark, curtained room,

You will never be able to see in daylight,

The blue berry and the black berry bush,

And will overlook the textures of sidewalks.

VENUS

Only Venus’ lips and their lipstick cross the horizon,

Floating above the grass’ green specks on the mountain’s lavender crests.

Gazers have gathered to stand on sun-burned sand to pray

For the return to earth of her blonde curls and whole body.

Once Venus and her whole body dwelt in a Hörselberg cavern,

But now only her lips float high up in the sky over mountains.

STRESSA

In a narrow, dark hallway hangs a portrait

Of a pale man dressed in black whose white-gloved fingers

Are tensely intertwined,

As it all nights had forever lost their moons,

As if he would forever be confronted by a darkness

With hoof sounds of unseen fauns

And the sounds of naked nymphs’ silver sandals

That he could never enter.

The portrait rarely noticed by the bypassers,

Who either gazed at the other brighter wall

With paintings of brown girls, chariots, and cymbals,

Or hurried to the next room with sardonyx, porphyry, and basalt.

I stopped to study his pale face;

As I looked, he closed his eyes.