October 2000 | back-issues, poetry, William B. Hunt
Torrential–in the branches–time comes down, and Sibyl can’t stop the clock. Every word that Heather speaks she wants to hear before leaving the world. Nothingness enchants nothing. Show her the roots of your sound, Heather. Let your dense coronation ring–go to the sundial and redial it, find sundown’s second down. Enter with your heart’s chords the universal orchard universal in violet. Something is blackening over the rainbow, perhaps it is a rock fracture in the mountains. And so you will hate to listen to the blood’s sea-shadow. You run away to sea and I to tea.
October 2000 | back-issues, poetry, William B. Hunt
Sibyl I do remember when your heart was concealed and your blood glittered through my constitution as each evening broke down. And I am listening for new music from your snow-white imagination, strength-giving and searing. Tell me anything but farewell, let us not indulge in violence, reach to me out of the dust that underscores the aria at my stylus. Oh, deadly water-shadows, there is a spider in the night sky when I only want to place a hot chocolate cup in the hand of Sibyl. Hold it steadily now, Sibyl; in deepest old age, with trembling.
October 2000 | back-issues, poetry, William B. Hunt
Sibyl right now has this plan. It requires her to watch the clocktower. She is expecting Heather to arrive. What was that scratching sound at the door this morning? She will sell off her jewelry to stay in New York for another week. At Carnegie Hall, she saw keyboards bathed in floodlight. What an imagination you have, Sibyl! I must see you again. Your heritage is no more solid than the chimes that strike in the clocktower, and these poems are my own chords struck off at odd angles. Could we not hold hands once more under blue winter chimes?
