Animal People by Carol Rumens

Author:Carol Rumens [Rumens, Carol]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781781723197
Publisher: Seren

Cymraeg – the Welsh language

Gwartheg – cattle

Figurine

(Calcite, Ain Sakhri cave, c.8000 B.C.)

Heart of a calf, composed

of two mini-humans,

their bumpy heads the atria, scant limbs

like wraparound arteries,

it sat in your palm. Deep in a storm of bloodstreams,

the mouths and noses puzzled: kiss or breathe?

*

Were you fondling a floating rain-queen, or

the golden one inside you, your

double undoubled, coupled as if never,

till someone, you, remembering, knew this cobble,

*

pushed into the sparkly calcite grain

made memory stand again?

*

Not all the harsh-gasped breathing-to-breathing, not

all the clench and sweat not all

the corn-silk adhesive not

the bleeding and delving not all

the arching the wrenching the splitting the

sweet, oh, the sweet rain sowing

the replica heart, whose thin cry you were crying

could have sheltered you from our mouths.

*

Rain speckled museum pillars. Slow red buses.

Laughter, raincoats, silliness, stillness.

But thy eternal summer shall not

*

Their whistle-thin bones, their sand-grains of saliva

deep in the flotsam of Ain Sahkri: here.

*

So long lives this. I wish you could hold your lovers

(I wish I could) – blunt-headed, froggy-legged,

sighing and moving together,

with centuries to discover how to breathe.

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