Poems

From Sacrifice
by Cecilia Woloch

SPRING

and no promise of peace. Shallow, human laughter; skin, greedy for
light. The glimmering city, the minty trees, the earth giving way
underneath us. A helpless season. Dove over dark grass, the watery
gray of the air. Now, in our bodies, the fish - like children ache to be
seen. Our mouths are translucent. We leap from the red winter,
slowly, more cautious; the wind stirs our innocent feet. And though
we cannot be new again, we must be new. So that suddenly I meet
you, unfold your dark face in my two burning hands. Amazed, in this
glory of weather between us, how upright you slant, in such heat.
Yellow love that I've poisoned. Poisonous mystery that I eat. Small,
blue flame that feeds me. Hercules. Spring.

SLEEP. NOT FALLING. YET.

And then your body as ravine
and I am slipping to the edge of it -
you ask if there are trees, I say
a few .
And moonlight through the alley throws itself onto the bed.
My eyes are closed, my eyes are opened,
it's the same no matter how hard I am trying
not to look;
steep green - Is there a stream? you ask.
I say that there must be,
though it seems hidden,
maybe underground or maybe in the sky.
And you tell me you hear voices just before you fall asleep
and I say, Listen to me, listen,
please don't worry;
and the darkness shifts around us
and the temple in the mountain cracks its door
and we go in.

THE INTEGRITY OF ANGELS

Sometimes you wait for the angels to come and they never arrive. In
spite of your candles and bells, your white curtains, the windows left
open to sky. The phone rings at midnight; a friend is calling you to
say that she cannot cry. And you have no words to break the spell for
her, small comfort, little advice. Though you've studied eastern
religions and ancient rites for clues to your own strange heart -
which is, after all, only muscle and blood. You've called on the spirits
of everyone you have ever loved who has ever died. But, in fact, they
are simply gone, and will not come back from wherever it is they have
disappeared into, and will not speak or touch your arm. Sometimes
you want proof that there is more to God than the fairytales; everyone
does. You want visitations from that other world to tell you what it's
like. If there are apples or hunger there, music and graves and light.
If the body misses itself and its complex desires, its fevers, its weight.
You want an angel who looks like you looked before you were a child
to descend again. To hover between what you are, what you dream,
and give you the secret of your life. An answer, a promise, your fate
in a shining bowl ripe to be eaten at last. But the angels won't come.
They want you to decide.

A WOMAN GROWN
BEAUTIFULLY OLD

Some nights in the cave of the tigers,
a woman goes in to be near their sleep.
She doesn't bring jewels,
their teeth are enough.
What she wants is to hear their terrible breathing,
to stand at the mouth of the cave
with the sky on her shoulders,
her face in the heavier darkness.
Her hands drop like stones in a lake to her sides,
her arms are bare.
This is what fearlessness is, and hope:
that the tigers are dreaming of her
as she dreams of them,
that her death has no footprints.

Cecilia Woloch is the author of three collections of poetry, Sacrifice (1997), Tsigan (2002), and Late (2003). She is the founding director of Summer Poetry in Idyllwild. Active in the Los Angeles literary community for more than twenty years, she has conducted poetry workshops for children, young people, and adults throughout the United States and Europe, from public schools and universities to prisons and hospitals. In 2003, Woloch launched a poetry outreach program in conjunction with Communities in Schools of Atlanta and she also collaborated in the creation of International Living's first Paris Poetry Workshop. She maintains homes in Los Angeles and Atlanta, although she is currently travelling in Europe.

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