from The Spring Flowers Own: “This unfinished business of my / childhood” by Etel Adnan

This unfinished business of my

childhood

this emerald lake

from my journey’s other

side

haunts hierarchies of heavens

a palm forest

fell overnight

to make room for an unwanted

garden

ever since

fevers and swellings

turn me into a river

the streets were steep

winds were running ahead

of ships . . .

There was indeed the death of birds

the moon had passed away.

*

The morning after his death

pursuing him beyond his bitter end

his mother came to

his grave:

she removed his bones out of their pattern
and ditched them into mud:

women came at night

and claimed Rimbaud their own

that night there was much

thunder it was awesome

*

Laurels and lilacs

bloom around my head

because I stood up to the sun

You see the Colorado River runs

between flowered banks

I repeat my journeys to seek the

happiness that overcame

your absence

I was happy not to love you anymore

until the sunset reached

the East

and broke my raft apart

there were other rivers underground

covered with dead flowers

it was cold it was cold yes it was

cold.

*

Under a combination of pain

and machine-gun fire

flowers disappeared

they are in the same

state of non-being

as Emily Dickinson

We the dead have conversation

in our gardens

about our lack of

existence.

*

The gardener is planting

blue and white

flowers

some angel moved in with me

to flee the cold

temperature on earth are

rising

but we wear upon us some

immovable frost

everyone carries his dying as

a growing shadow.

*

I left the morning paper

by the coffee cup

the heat was 85 like the year

and I went to the window to find

that flowers had bloomed overnight

to replace the bodies

felled in the war

the enemy had come with fire

and ruse

to stamp the names of the dead

in the gardens of Yohmor

It is not because spring

is too beautiful

that we’ll not write what

happens in the dark.

*

A butterfly came to die

between two stones

at the foot of the Mountain

the mountain shed shadows

over it

to cover the secret of

death.

*

Etel Adnan, from “The Spring Flowers Own" from The Spring Flowers Own & The Manifestations of the Voyage. Copyright © 1990 by Etel Adnan. Source: The Spring Flowers Own & The Manifestations of the Voyage(The Post-Apollo Press, 1990)