— "mu" fifth part — His they their we, their he his was but if need be one, self- extinguishing I, neither sham nor excuse yet an alibi, exited, out, else the only where he'd be. Before the long since remaindered body, imagines each crack, each crevice as it sweats under cloth, numbed inarticulate tongues touching down on love's endlessly warmed-over thigh. The awaited one she mistook him for haunts him, tells him in dreams he told him so. Such offense, but at what won't say, moot remonstrance, no resolve if not not to be caught out. . . Abstract advance, its advantage unproved, unbelieved-in, vain what wish would give. . . Late eighties night momentarily bleached by bomblight. Awoke, maybe inwardly wanted it, wrestling with dreams of the awaited one again. Thought back but a moment later what moodier start to have gotten off to, angered by that but begrudged it its impact and so sits remembering, pretending, shrugs it off. . . Arced harp. Dark bent-over body. Esoteric sun whose boat its back upheld. . . Unseizably vast underbelly of light, limb-letting thrust. Tread of hoofs. Weighted udders of dust. . . His it their she once they awake, the arisen one, world at her feet, her feet one with their rapture, ankledeep in damage though she dances. . . The slippings off of her of their hands define her hips, whose are the suns whose heat his nights taste of and as at last he lies her legs loom, naked, loose gown pulled from her, sleep turns. And he with his postures cramps the air, bent lotuslike, lips part kiss, part pout
From School of Udhra by Nathaniel Mackey. Copyright © 1993 by Nathaniel Mackey. Reprinted by permission of City Lights Books. All rights reserved.