by
Lucie Brock-Broido
FOR A CLOUDED LEOPARD IN ANOTHER LIFE
You
were a seed still in Darwin's left breast pocket,
Not
imagined yet, almost invisible in the felt
There
just above his heart,
The
bluey nubbin sleeping in a child's
Unmarred
arms.
Things
vanish in the morning when we wake
Like
loam that only grows on buttermilk, at night.
In
April, a tiny feline on the ledges of a billow cloud,
Or
like the finch let loose in the mossery, you were ended
Unexpectedly;
what is only left of you is only me.
FOR A SNOW LEOPARD
IN OCTOBER
Stay,
little ounce, here in
Fleece
and leaf with me, in the evermore
Where
swans trembled in the lake around our bed of hay and morning
Came
each morning like a felt cloak billowing
Across
the most pale day. It was the color of a steeple disappearing
In
an old Venetian sky. Or of a saint tamping the grenadine
Of
his heavy robes before the Blessing of the Animals.
I've
heard tell of men who brought Great Pyrenees, a borzoi, or
Some
pocket mice, baskets of mourning doves beneath their wicker lids,
A
chameleon on a leash from the Prussian circuses,
And
from the farthest Caucasus, some tundra wolves in pairs.
In
a meadow I had fallen
As
deep in sleep as a trilobite in the red clay of the centuries.
Even
now, just down our winding road, I can hear the children blanketing
Themselves
to sleep in leaves from maple trees.
No
bad dreams will come to them I know
Because
once, in the gone-ago, I was a lynx as well, safe as a tiger-iris
In
its silt on the banks of the Euphrates, as you were. Would they take
You
now from me, like Leonardo's sleeve disappearing in
The
air. And when I woke I could not wake
You,
little, sphinx. I could not keep you here with me.
Anywhere,
I could not bear to let you go. Stay here
In
our clouded bed of wind and timothy with me.
Lie
here with me in snow.
From Lucie Brock-Broido, Stay, Illusion (2013).
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