The Nocturnes III

by Claudia Dobkins Dikinis

Written in Nerja, Spain, 1975

Dedicated to the Memory of George Behrman

NOCTURNE No. 9

De Sombras

By now the mountain thinks of our feet
as moveable stones that disappear.
The path breathes like a bed
after the bodies have left it.

But our shoes have started something irreversible:
as hands wipe away journeys on soiled rags,
as water throws grayness down drains and tunnels,
the sea collects syllables of mud;
shameful shadows of our processsion from grape arbors
to empty wine bottles.

NOCTURNE No. 10

You have passed like the Sierra Nevadas
seen from window of rushing train;
and all of the songs,
odes,
nocturnes,
and serenadas
could not construct your geology,
your cold, gray science,
your sediment crystallized in my joints.

My fingers ache
like gnarled boughs of trees
to fashion you in sea mud.
In Mercury's color, my faded ribbon
beats silver-keyed upon the page.
My harsh piano,
my 26 daggers tear at your death
smearing love in my palms
like extreme unction.

NOCTURNE No. 11

Ars Poetica
Because I heard its dark music in my sleep,
I fell through the hole in the bed.
Lover, you won't find me in your sweaty sheets,
but look inside the dead feathers.
The sea has leaked up every floor
until even starfish shine in your shoes
like silver lame' spiders.

I am in a net with crustaceans.
We swing like drunken housewives.
We dip our jagged claws into corals
and paint crossbones on sunken treasure.

A century may pass before our dried salt
scratches through the muslin,
before your peaceful bed suddenly screams
with you in it.

I warn you:
when the chill of the sea
locks her fingers on your spine,
you will be driven to let blood
in the name of paper.

NOCTURNE No. 12

Ode to Botijo
Little jug,
color of a turtle's belly
but smooth,
or stained like underslips
of Spanish nuns,
you are pure.
You held water:
fire,
air
earthwater of the Sierra Nevadas;
the mother-water of flowers
painted like a readied womb
or . . . firecrackers!

You were a gentle head
hung humbly in the Olive,
how you dangled like a tiny Christ
without insult.

Botijo,
faithful giver,
deliverer of the blue-snow water,
chaste water,
spring water of goats ripened to season,
have you missed the rough Campacino hands
that took you like a woman?
Are you withering like a girl missing love?
Is your belly sickened with American prayers?
Do you dispair on this unholy continent?
this steel ship breaking through blackened waters?

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Copyright © 1975-2010 by Claudia Dobkins Dikinis