As Though The Gods Love Us

from As Though The Gods Love Us
Nightwood Editions, Canada, 2000

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AS THOUGH THE GODS LOVE US

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Venture out onto the roof garden
of Deanna and Peter Austerberrys’
house on the steep stretch of Huertas
and from that vantage view
overlooking San Miguel de Allende,
watch the imperial Aztec sun,
centripetal, as it sets,
smearing the indigenous sky
livid red with sacrificial blood.

Meanwhile, the gods
drain our blood,
eat our flesh,
feast on our bones
as though they love us.

Soon, encroaching darkness
crouches over the land
and light withdraws in turn,
part of cyclical time
as enfolded in the ancient
screens of painted songs.
Night grows enormous,
creeps across earth’s fertile belly,
a lover mounting, ready,
ardent for consumation,
stifling once again
day’s other humdrum songs.

Meanwhile, the gods
drain our blood,
eat our flesh,
feast on our bones
as though they love us.

Newly arrived, the crescent moon,
bashful, watches the whole enactment,
shares in that orgasmic, sacramental
moment which reveals, illuminates
like lightning-bolt
the old, secret religion
that was poetry.
Thus converted, exultant, she
sheds her demureness, ushers in
turbulences of lascivious silver,
performing her public, seductive dance.

Meanwhile, the gods
drain our blood,
eat our flesh,
feast on our bones
as though they love us.

•

Mexico
December, 1999

•

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