EURASIA IN YOUR EYES

EURASIA IN YOUR EYES

Searching for true east, a marriage,

I rub bergamot between my breasts

and the quiet rage of Eurasia arises

in you but Easter slipped from my legs

like a saber in all its crimson misery.

Where have you been all my life? we ask.

Blame this mating on the aroma of asters,

a midnight river teasing us,

or your mother's birthday vodka.

The idea undoes us like trousers,

(I hand them to you like a dutiful wife,

pants, I say, grabbing your cock,

your breast, so like a girl's, you answer)

and feathered with the august details

of a continent or two in the way,

there is time enough for remorse.

The child within cannot forget the mystery

of Siberian tigers who roam the mist

between the taiga and the tundra,

the extinction of the world in their settling tracks.

Our eyes measure the barometer of true east

and Tatar ponies from the steppes 
plunder our dreams.

A morgue in the place of memory,

was it Poland or Armenia?

The even meter of soldier's feet urges

and arouses (ergot on rye, rarest of serums)

the idea of homeland. 
The Ukrainian mortuary of Bibi Yar.

Is it better to kill a son like Taras Bulba?

Sorry tears are of little use to the iris then.

What beast beats the tambour making us merry?

What year begat this tribe of dancing bears

under starry mirages of usury and augery?

Is it better to marry mid-winter in a yurt

beneath meteor showers when the magi comes?

Maybe tremors have little to do with the magus

who is restorer of rumors and of greater truths.

The irate grebes and murres

master the river and the marsh

with indifferent but equal tongues.

9/18/89