LA SONAMBULA

 Frog Song (detail)

Cory Godbey

LA SONAMBULA

Day or night do not matter much

When seated in the red and white striped chair.

The room requires an ability to

Carve light into huge slashes and crescents,

And toss them about the room,

At once careless and precise.

From here it is possible to contemplate

The planets, one minute small, to be

Held in the hand, the next,

An impulse transforming them into

Something beyond human understanding,

An unceasing theology made of swirling

Rocks in an airless void that has no

Center and is everywhere.

I build talismanic instruments,

Swords and knives and offer them

To the sleepless, thinking they may be gods

That can unwind their own labyrinths

So one may travel from this room

Filled with chintz and recklessness

To find a precise place

Where we might stand, pleased

To be seeing a garden,

A faun waking a nymph,

The lemon trees,

The room where the song has

Finally found a voice that can

Only be heard by La Sonambula,

Pleasing to the ear, made of water

And the curve of a hand

To cup the ear, to repeat

A weaving in dream after dream,

Honey dripping on my feet,

Holding the ‘shyness of melancholy’

In the hands resting on one’s lap.

I cannot know it but for the

Loneliness of waking, illiterate 

To all the writing in the world.

Dust creating a language within me,

I endeavor to speak.