Eden Incunabulum
“As his unlikeness fitted mine”—
so his luciferous kiss, ecliptic : me
pinned beneath
lips bitten as under weight of prayer, Ave—but
no common vocative, no
paradise above, and we not beholden
to a name, not
to a local god banking fever blaze his seasonal malady
of flowers—nor to demi-urge
nor the lapsarian system’s glittering, how
later we spoke
between us of sacred and profane as if the numinous
could bring death—the only
system—to bear burn outside
him
and hang its glister wisdom and singe in the viridian wilt. Lilt,
to break salt in that sugar
where skin was no choice
and sanguine, not
blameless, though, Ave, I loved our words for want
beginning liquor, squander
sip and fizz : fuck, ferment
I loved
and bluebottles tippling windfall rot, bruises’ wicked wine
gone vinegar
beneath the taut brief glaze
of wings, but
it was not yet nameable, what we later called disease : script
brought us by the trick
snake’s fakey Beelzebubbery.
In the dirt
with his dictionary skin, tight skein of syllables knit by un-
numbered undulating
clicking ribs, the snake slunk
and stung
and spelled the dust with his tongue and tail and was nothing,
a black forked lisp
in the subfusc grass hued
blue as the blue
sky tipped its lip to ocean horizon and filled, hugest
amphora, and sank,
evening, Ave, I will tell you
now I loved it
all. That in his hot body there was something similar
to the idea of heat
which was in my mind,
that when we
alembic, lay together, we bequeathed the white
fixed earth beneath
ardent water and a season’s kept
blood, and I not
a rib of his, not further hurt in his marrow—for the idea
of death was in him,
the only system—and we lay together
in the field
that was not yet page, not begun with A—, not alpha nor
apple, not Ave, not yet
because what we knew was
the least of it
then. It was difficult to sleep with the love of words gone
gospel between my thighs
where nightly he’d jack
the pulpit, Ave
Corpus, Ave Numen, gnosis and throb unalphabetical,
I will tell you
I loved it all, fastest brushfires
and dryburns
his body’s doublecross, garden lost to loss, incurable
season : wilt, lilt : singe,
our song. And the snake,
lumen skin
of alphabets, rubbing his stomach in the dust until his tin
eyes filled with milk,
his slack skin flickered and split
and new
black sinew out of the slough dead lettered vellum
legless crept and let fall wept
whisper, hiss, paperhush :
with the skin
language left behind I bind time to memorial : Book of Our
Garden Hours, illuminated
bloom : Here a gilt script singe sings of heat
split in its leaves,
and the bee gives suck to the book : Ave Incunabulum, love’s
first work : Ave,
In Memoriam—
[ J—5/99 ]
-Brian Teare
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