Lux Tremula — Poetry by Lydia Duprat Posts

Till F.

He is, in truth, a prince: from the Latin princeps,
Meaning first man, ruler, chief.
He is the man who comes before all others,
The one who rules my heart,
The chief object of my desire.
A word from him and I am ablaze.
A glance from him and I am on fire.

First I knew your mother,
before you even were.
I met her as she was crossing the lawn, I met her
as she was resting in the shade of the lilac shrub.
Every time I saw her, she was a bit larger,
a bit heavier, approaching the end of term.
And then, one day, your mother went away,
and hasn’t been seen since.
But what does it matter? You came,
a tiny, spiny, darling little creature,
with your moist black speck of a snout,
twitching,
your diminutive mouth, your teeny teeth,
chewing, chewing,
your little feet, your whiskers, your soft, furry belly.
I gave you a name.
I spoke of you—widely.
I captured you on film.
             I gave you a name!

To Paola, August 1988

Let me spread the rug before the crackling fire
So that we may sit side by side, as before,
And gaze at the flames straining ever higher
As they sketch our silhouettes upon the floor.

Your cheeks are glowing; your eyes are brighter still,
And so are mine, unless I’m much mistaken.
Without, a raging storm; the dark; the autumn chill;
Within, an orb of heat and light that we partake in.

Let the fire be the only one to speak.
Leave the shadows skulking at the corners of the room.
It is not the silence that will make us weak,
But words that venture past our lips too soon.

When last we met, our faces were so smooth,
Few roads were yet engraved upon that map.
Now that we’ve labored away from our youth,
I hope we’ll find a way to bridge the gap.

My desire is a fruit
That fell from the tree
And burst on the ground.
My love is all around,
Succulent and free,
Sacred and sound:
Come give me a kiss!
 
Why, if I spend my days
Dreaming of your scent
And fondling the very air
Every second I spend and however I fare—
Take pity on me! A mere mortal I am,
And the flesh being weak—
Come give me a kiss!

Here's the Moon, in love with the Sea,
Her silvery tongue all over his face,
Deliriously covering his rugged face,
As she covets his depths and matches his pace.
With ardent, argent-y kisses she declares her hardened intent
But for tonight, and tonight only. For she means to leave no trace
Of her boundless and shameless ardor
Lest her Lord, the Sun, King of the heavens,
Upon rising again on the morrow know
Either bitterness or sorrow.

Happy birthday, You. Congratulations
On a new year of needless fretting and trepidation,
On twelve new months brimming over
With conflicting desires and gratuitous agitation,
On three hundred sixty-five days
Of industrious navel-gazing and faulty penetration,
And eight thousand seven hundred sixty hours of continuous brooding
And those recurrent fits of quasi-revelations.

You will never grow up, never ever. Happy birthday, Me. Congratulations.

I am a honeycomb and, too, a time machine:
I’m rows of chambers mired in an earlier age,		
Where every single chamber opens to a stage,
And every single stage depicts a unique scene.
You’ll often find me drifting, wandering niche to niche.
You’ll often see me journeying back and forth in time.		
And if I, on occasion, delve in grief and grime,		
I’ll sooner soak in rivers rich in lambent fish.		
Had someone known how fecund life can be,
She might have told me, earlier in the day,
That every moment lived hands you the key
To yet another niche along the way.

You speak of time and of the wounds it allegedly heals.
You speak of grief as something that in time shall fade.
But isn’t time rather a rascal that reveals
the marks once etched by a savage blade
on tender skin? On your eye’s very membrane?
Isn’t time the tautening of a scar, thus urging you against motion,
the rent in the eye that drives you insane,
despair that fattens from pond to creek, to river, to ocean?

Time’s job is not to ease, but aggravate.
Time’s job is not to efface, but accentuate.
Time’s job is to create that perfect monster wave
that will flatten you against the sand.
So don’t you be deceived by that insidious knave: to him
We’re mere sheets of parchment to stab at with a vicious hand.