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"Elegy for the Other"
"Night after night, I lie down cold
in that life again, where nothing has changed
in the opaque stillness, the dry sound of insects,
smell of swamp musk and lime.
If I could only let the darkness cover you,
a kind of coat but penetrable,
a way water is a garment
opening its arms to hold you
and hold you, until your face is the swamp’s face
and there is nothing left to understand."
From Part II of Cleopatra Mathis' "Elegy for the Other" which can be found in The Made Thing: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern Poetry, edited by Leon Stokesbury and published by University of Arkansas Press in 1987.
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Comments
weirdelf
Fri, 2014-01-03 12:17
welcome, swamp witch,
entirely apposite,
and rather compelling.
cheers,
Jess
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Lonnie
Fri, 2014-01-03 17:09
Hello Swamp Witch
One detects a shade of Faulkneresque sadness here and that is a good thing, is it not? Especially from a Southern point of view! The way this reads is thoroughly entrancing, and I applaud its candor!