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 Contents | September 2002 More on poetry from The Atlantic Monthly. |
Elegies
Lauds for St. Germaine Cousin (1579-1601) by Christianne Balk .....  Hear Christianne Balk read this poem (in RealAudio)Blessed is the One who lifts the slow sun above this morning's raw orange edge, who moves the ewe to nudge her birth- stunned lamb into the flock's heat, who leads the hen to steer her keets as soon as they can walk into the insect- filled, high grass, guides the owl to tear fresh pigeon into pieces small enough to fill the owlet's gaping bill, and prompts the rat to lick the pup that's not her own and take it to her side, directs the swan to trumpet, bob her head, and raise her wings, quivering into a living canopy above the nest built without hands by those who have no hands, just wings, wings that cannot weave but must and somehow do, just as I twist thread from the distaff's wild wether wool, skirted, sorted, scoured, and drawn into bumps of roving held awry until the sun lifts high enough to warm these slow fingers spinning fast and faster, dropping the spindle like a top, whorling fibers clockwise to pull the yarn taut and straight, plying many into one.
Christianne Balk, who lives in Seattle, is the author of Bindweed (1986) and Desiring Flight (1995). Copyright © 2002 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. The Atlantic Monthly; September 2002; Lauds for St. Germaine Cousin (1579–1601); Volume 290, No. 2; 103. |
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