The Land of Ice and Vine: Poems

The Vysehrad Drowned

I am wet with years and my eyes are the eyes of fish

My soul was plucked

        from the air

but I was not a bird

and

I am not a fish

thinking in shades of of

        green and brown

a slash of light appears from above

      and then is gone again

the sun

      unnatural light in this

churning darkness

the echoes of other lives

high above

     the sounds of living water

moves

drifts through me

     I am a catacomb of life

salted with age

    and soaked through with time

He opened his arms

    calling to me

without sound

vibrations like the bottom 

of the ocean

harsh desire

                    I was riveted to him 

           like any piece of steel

And he promised me:

      something like love

      promised to entangle me in

his black rag hair

      to let me touch the coldness of

      that glistening skin like

the body of whales

to pulverize me

in the dark recesses of his triangular 

bone teeth

        a death that is nothing like dying

But look

I have not grown gills

nor do veins branch 

         red beneath my skin

I am not rock

a shelf of river crust

silt, oil and bone

And I move

yes, I can still move

         my human body

my hand passes empty

         in front of my eyes

they clutch at water

         they are full of nothing