Duende

By Jennifer Ferraro

Poems of the woken blood
and the fevered dancing
form is vanquished
and a slave

to the nameless thing that has
called desire home
grows heavier and heavier with tenderness

wants to flare up
and extinguish into is

In ash the song awakens
in the fruitfulness of ash
in the landscape of stone
the song awakens
as the whiff of life
born of the dancing god's death

song becomes bridge
bridge becomes arrival
note and throat are heart
thrusting for heaven
in this flesh clothed at last in onlyness

which is dying even with its song
even at its height when it is most Life

it knows the coming which goes
and is
but for the life of one song