ELEANOR GRAY - POEMS

Eleanor Gray lives in California with her partner and cat, Puck. She is co-founder and editor of Figroot Press and writes often at smakka--bagms.tumblr.coom

1.

O, Hesperides, there is so much we have

left behind - do you remember that old life?

over and over you are sighing amongst

the chestnut trees

the west wind rests on the lake, washing the


dusk with her silver

                              of dark riders

beneath the oaks we rest, lacking not song

nor lyre, nor lyrics sweet


what is it that fills me?


sovereign hands, blue seas, tender pine-eaves,

the intimacy of these dreams

which tyrannize me?


I see the ancient light on the golden brow

of my beloved


flower-lit cliffs where wildgrasses give

growth to everything


evening moss, flourishing springs,

fruit trees that hang heavy in the garden

of your longing


you name me by my animal name,

keeper of the river

              where the moon does her pale lit

dance & soft waters hum their wealth

of earth’s gentlest soils


fear flutters like moths to light

where all is bright & blinding about

our tender hands  


the limitless dark of your evening,


how free you keep me,

                 nobody’s daughter,

beloved by no one


we watch the black ships of my old kin leaving

our harbor behind


the mother of my old life spending her

days deep in the black throat of earth


a moon drowned in clover


now winter-sparrows churn from their dark sanctum,

frozen, invisible, dumb as hands -  such is your will


heralding the simple, beseeching the cinder

of every heart


your skin the book of every twilight


lunar-mouthed,  plum-boned, hands of ash &

cast of crows


how far we have come, how lush our bed,

how weighed with love


the ground mottled with birdwing

dark with past’s names & gone


how in your kingdom, you know all the

quiet things,

     the moonlit dance of deathless faye


the hundred nights of my animal sleep,

the dark heart of fathomless waters


whisper, I wear soft colors, forsaken

by every life I have lived


beloved’s voice of leaves in the grass

of my wound,


bright as a sun


and perhaps, daughter of evening,

no matter what you take from me


that loss will always burn

​

2.
down the dark mountain
river, skin, the smell of mares
and coming dusk


bright bustle of birds, red
from the forge of a lesser god


three sisters at the grave
of their mother


Selene, silver one, raised cloak,
I see you


burying your hands in whiteness
pulled by the two mares of moon


loss is here, in this dark place,
the sisters and their grieving


beneath an arrow’s eye I offer
everything I have left


dreams of sea, greed, this faithless organ
spanning over a body of nothing


animal heart, mouthmark

I, sister,
           act of severance, serving
who am I to turn down fate?


the mother is gone -

grief is black
and tastes like deep earth

the night, unresisting, white haired
         with the silver-tops of ancient trees


I try to cultivate detachment,
    the loosening of past to the infinity
of wild fields


woodnymphs, tamed, singing, in pose
of many mouths at dusk


the sisters leave without me
so sighs the river, sweeping past sweetgrass
and rotwood


the harvest of many hearts
            thrown to the throes of blue


always, blue

high winds, foothills, red light
pulsing the western way


Selene, where are you off to, so late and alone?
the curve of your chariot’s beaded way connects
moon to each moon


serpent of night, speak to me with woman-voice,
suffer touch and dark men


the pine’s handsome bleeding, the loss of love

and family


dance the sea on the shore, leave me not alone,
-

       I know you will

3.

benthic night

the moon wears sea’s ears,

        the heart of a river-priest

snowwater, rotwood, with nothing

but the sea to call a husband




daughters of dusk do their dark dance,

not fit for the eye of any mortal  



old love, I come bleeding, hold me to

my name & nettle’s pale stream


beguile the woods, bespeak earth

uneared womb

             tender eye of beveled moon




for I,
                                                dull soul,

descendent of the river,

whose blue arms couldn’t keep you


dream of birds, shadow-swift hare,

the seraphic wan of a tender eve where

all is sweet and keeping


for who does not sing, Selene,

                              of your golden night?


even I, small worth, creature of grieving


praise you thus,


O, come to me, sleep,

                    black and cold and gone

gleaming in the depths of

     forever night

4.

First day of the underworld:

grassy halo, inscribed with the enchantment of many plains,

seraphic wing, in sleep, black and cold, twisting, grey-eyed.  

Birdsong comes mutable as embers, thieving night & flesh-

troubled soul                    of[her, echo              amaranth ash

in every world she leaves me                           rites of red reeds

whose rivers lead to heaven. True one,  I cherish you, threading

up into night’s cavern. Wagon-loads of moonblooms, woodpiles

bleached to bone in lonely fields alone, will you come? Mares

mule laden with wildflowers,  well-tended, betraying all that

was never said, traveling into the loom’s fret of desire. So murmurs

the red world, dusted sweet to dull skin, pulling distance between

sins.   I am                                                                         I am

the host on the tongues of dark gods, trudging through the iron

of another time, the salt of a wife’s lot, the crown of thorns speaking

diadem of wheat and greedy things. Hellbirds shoal and scatter;

Hades call to them: take aim, take heart, pierce the throng of

forever night with the redness of your soul, filling the black seas

with gold.  Flint-leaved arrows, unmasked light, cipher of sword,

withdraw from the gardens. Here there is a man, Trojan born,

rider, archer, weeper, leaning into fossil, ringed in lantern light,

he remembers days of war and death, coins, dragons, bells, one-

armed dusk. The name he never was. Bless, he says, the throat drinking

the self. Forgive me. Where to wash this suffering to? There is nowhere,

this is the Otherworld forever. I work the work of death. She will never

come. The name you never were, her name.                            Gone. Crimson.

The snow in the high fields, flowering, margins of moon, loose reeds and rush,

gain voice. Leave. Unmake self mouth by mouth. Bathe in the extract of larks,

let the heart be quiet in the shade of wet pines. Call her forth from the black

hills and keep her.Will you come?​

5.

icicle moon, hoarfrost stars

your paleness gleams amongst the waters

where whitewolf passes and calls to its

children by name:

light, flesh, prey, dark


O, the quiet heart, be with me

through the anemone of many moors

and further -


the heart of winter besieges thee,

all is in praise of her softness


red with the eternal fruit of the

stolen body


I dream of darkness, black earth,

lake,

the face of moonglow on the water


infinite plains that bring forth wild mares

and girls without shadow


I am waiting, filled with grief, root, hoof,

fallen fruit,                   a darker hunger


skin that remembers a past-life of birds

and the limits of the soul within the


encumbrance of sorrow  


come to me,                        don’t

red is the yielding land, the world of the wounded

sculpted by the gossamer of mercury’s shadow


the old gods keep the night awake with fires


this is the earth’s moment

the smell of betrayal in the wind


Mount Ida thrusts a twisted thorn & the

ancient whisper of thistle  


I dream of bitter sea, lilac ash

I lament the name she gave me


black violets fold toward the silence of their

origin


gleaming in the depths of night

luminous mouth culling blue



in any world, will you keep me?


all that is unknown to me, all uncherished things,

to you my heart has been tethered


I sit in silence waiting to be chosen,

giving myself fully to what is mine


behaving, holding,

gorging on impermanence
​