“The Sieve,” “The Styx,” and “A Correction”

Ore-clusters in the lad’s hands

glow under the fluvial sun

as he scatters their uneven

facets within the mesh perforated

like a tulle veil sieving

the lad’s momentum.

The lad stirs and sunders the quartz-

silt from the grit that glitters

like the plant-seeds gulped

by the fluvial flow. He sifts

the graded soil into the compost-

tilth that heals the harvest.

Aggregated with the clay-

rhizomes, the weed-pulses,

twigs and leaves litter the tide

while the clay flows back

to the river like the organic peat

containing the Tollund turbulence.

Unable to mourn a distant relative

I pledged my anxiety to the Styx for consolation

that panicked my son.  As I walked

along the spry stream, I contemplated

a single pearl tainted by crimson blood.

The toxic waters scratched my skin, chafing

my blood like the river-bed scraped by grit.

Warped nerves galled both my legs

with electrical impulses. But, above the waters,

I saw l’étoile violette like a clematis-cluster

ascending the entrance of a quiescent

house with a library finally abandoned

for a fictitious debt where travellers once joined

their sisters and wives on their journeys.

The crimson curvatures of the arches

suspended into movable mists within the corridor-

mazes made me almost falter. My eye-pressure

measured, the diluting drops blurred

the glazed wheat-stems starting to sway

beneath the painted skyscrapers. The ocular

veil once removed, the tables and chairs,

like the ancestral sculptures in the room

seemed less distorted. Like the tidal levelling

of the shore’s uneven surface to prevent

inundations, within an hour, my retinal images

gradually smoothened. While I hurried to the lift

Time speeded up into a looped affinity

while my wrist-watch stopped at eternity.