Poem
'The Blind Minotaur', a new poem by Judith Bishop
by Judith Bishop •
Pablo Picasso, Vollard Suite, plate 97
Night’s the ground beneath my feet
since I learned to walk with you.
Scented guide with birds and flowers on your breath,
it’s no earth, but a sea we walk across.
These sailors, pulling out from shore,
delivered our desertion.
In this new life of mine,
my heart keeps coming on
its every old error, grassed over
as if natural convexities,
the quickly earthed parts of who I am,
underground until the brass of a song
blew in a resurrection mood.
I’d have eaten you alive, girl,
had you come to me trembling around the spiral wall,
dust closing on your fingertips: and then.
Now your eyes are my dominion
which your feet traverse directly,
and your fingers are the chords that stagger me.
