THE SON - POEM
1 March 2023 11:40 0 messages

Her body was all stones.
She lay in the stones like a glass marble.
There was no moisture in her.
There was only the dry spleeen and the liver gone hard as pumice-stone.
I closed her eyes.
I saw a sole once on a block of green marble.
It was flung straight from the living brine, its pupils were bright with a strange heat.
I watched a cat eat it alive.
When I touched her cheek, the light failed.
When I moved my open hand on her lips, there was no life there.
She smelled of the cheap soap we had washed her in.
I saw the black hollows below her eyes where desire swam.
I called her name in the dark, by no-one answered.
There was only the sap rising.
I though of the clotted mercury in the broken thermometer of her body.
It rose again in my head to a silver column, a sword of blood in the sun.
I held to its cross of fire in a dream of climbing.
I swam in the air: my wings were extended into the night.
I was borne above the clouds:
I flew at increasing speeds, to increading altitudes.
There was only the sun above me.
I was the sun.
The world was my mother, I spread my wings to protect her growth.
She broke into wheat and apples beneath my rain.
I came my fire to the sea, to the earth from the air, to the broken ground with my fresh seed.
I lay on her cold breast, inhaling the scend of iris and daffodils.
There was nothing more to be settled.
I thought of her dying words,
How butter would scarcely melt in her mouth.
I heard a wheel squeak and the drip of water.
I touched the cold rail and the covering sheet.
Your light shone in my eyes.
Forgive me.
The Son
George MacBeth
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