pron.
syme: a system of flowering in which the first axis bears a single terminal
flower which develops first, the inflorescence being continued by secondary,
tertiary and other axes; from the Latin cyma, to sprout; from the
Greek kyma—something swollen, a wave, sprout
I
1
I would say I remember it is not a dream
the sun was inside my skin the warmth of the sun
fell into me grass was ancient cloth
bees sang into ears
prayer of fertility I swore to this
on this day a child’s dress,
forgotten hair. what did I swear against
that I made this pledge so pungently
it stirs in me now
2
the children chase the glinting air swift with bubbles such opulence! mouths blowing miracles which flee
the children spill stolen oils on their bodies and curl, like little gods, in the water which laps at their skin
you know how many flowers I have brought for you, not to deny despair but to root a stubbornness for beauty
3
time is a spiral mapping me here
the present is a word whose fierce transformation
measures me here no words forgotten
though the names clot behind history
the tongue split in so many directions
I could not be understood or trusted
4
the eye which saw and burned when all was silent:
origin? no memory
joy? forgotten
birth? not this though its knowledge
knots in me, the snap of being
before lungs broke into breath
5
in the sea's green clarity clear to my skin, and salted
I tumble, like a fish dripping sun
later, bare-breasted I stand on my hands, praising sand
like a child emptied of questions
II
1
spewed into light first spawn of your womb
I was tumultuous and named
on the suck of you, so I named you
did I imagine once the gnaw of my cry
burn you through when you held me
n the helpless hands of mother?
2
and were you there later, to gather me
from light's play to uncurl fingers
sullied by rage I did not know it
3
the worms eat into the silence
the poisonous moults have hatched
and hatched their own. I've outgrown this divining
searching the breach for what is murky:
curse and promise: the cocoon, fat
and probably dead, in still water
4
the snake flew, bitten into two
by your axe. and five small faces
upturned, like scared moons and blinding the smell
of death, the jasmine strangling the outhouse
where the snake flew, immobile now
as memory’s myth: the wife who did it
(you did) on your own
5
finally you must bear the child dead. its eyes already lidded to nothingness fingers shaped to a bone. here the air will not move the silence is a hot night waiting, the storm will not come though the limbs pull themselves alive to a perfection and the skin, whiter now finished as a month-shot moon still pulses its blue and ancient love for you
III
1
sweet daughter, diminutive one
by the passage of myself you were born
this place of blood and moans
and squatting bore you
like a miracle because I was singing
2
when you have gone, as you will be child ruling the stars and
this faint day is my conjuring I
will hear you with fidelity
I have seen your small limbs dancing with
nature’s choreography and
the jolt of fears was my making as
you lullabied me
I have known your breath of sleep your
small god’s uncensored dreams as
these words are my remembering I conjure your lyric, again for
me
3
later, the children will quieten. and
the clear silence culled at
the feet of their laughter will
lower into rooms where
darker children dream: of
marbles splashing against
ashen floors, and dolls vagrant,
their clotted hair and
unicorns, slinking in
the brunt of dawn
4
once I sparkled in
the arms of the waterfall grateful for
its effervescence not
solid yet insistent
but what is this we
hold in hands sharply quiet
as stone?
5
every moment gathered: hands
held to nothing but
the ash of touch the
fledgling word, fleeing: its
slow assent to night
your body of
blackness pressed by
blackness mute.
IV
1
for you I thank all the gods in their
breasted and cocked glory: this
is a high song from
the altar of thighs, where
tongues lose themselves and
find themselves in water
how can paradise be lost when
within your palm’s rough
embrace, I bloom and
the apple ripens on
the branch again, for
the clear fetching
2
the fleck of moments that
bred to this, the
brute journey almost
complete
how always I
have named love at
the verge of
fear’s oldest moment
lured it into
a warmth simply,
a nest of arms cradling
me back
to origin. where
another breathed for me. so
I slept again, and
waited
now the masts sway and
fall from me leaving
me to weight
alone
under my weight I
crawl through
the ancient lip
of severance
3
I eat apples
I eat the breasts of them the
bridal core of them the
hovering trace of
the guzzling bee
I thank the bee
I eat the rain in them all
the moods of rain the
pink travelling kiss of
the petals clamoring
I eat the crystals clinging,
the flesh which
parts like blood its
sweet sting
I eat the whole apple
4
the abandoned children cry at
the edge of
the camera. my
lips nest into yours
I am just starting. an
unseasonal bloom rooting
deep its
dry, unbreakable lessons
5
in the distant arms of the blossom tree small
flowers bloom, and
arrive
it is long that the fruit and
light take to reach through woodenness
but since the moment you burst from
your own darkness, you have waited
V
1
bloodily I came risen
on meat and bone
large hands stopped me. the
world stooped
and dug up wars, worms. the
children’s faces winced
before my cloak my
heavy lameness
I walked with a large brutal
stick
words, an arm raised lovers
hurtling to walls.
I could not understand my strength. I
was simply asking to speak
2
how shall I meet you, oldest
intimate?
I shall dance slowly,
one step
3
perhaps I saw you coming, distantly from
where the hills were green, distantly across
deserts and valleys, ravines and the vines of rivers
perhaps I saw you, distantly, washing
your father's hands as
they shrunk into death
I too held my father's hand asking,
how do I speak with your death though
for forty days he had already kept his silence
perhaps I saw you coming with
your sheer blue eye and generous mouth kept
through all my darkness
4
(gulls)
the white stampede of wings burning
the air from
where we watched
as if the blue gullet of sky had
gasped open to a wild god
white-flamed a
scattering bearing towards us
scalded by the eye of
such a clear god we emerge from sand
trembling beak, beat stung
by daylight you, skirting the dune
with its childish incline a
tremor of legs, a pure pace
5
the oranges are bitter,
my love though
you dragged that
looted one to your lips
like a wish. a
waiting, as if its
honey the
colour of sun could
blind us — us? —
savage our
tongues with
a sweetness that
was bald, that was not sweet
Bio:
Jacinta lives in
Melbourne with her husband and three daughters. She has had poetry published
in LINQ and in the anthologies Motherlode, Hot Type, Australian
Verse: An Oxford Anthology (ed. John Leonard 1998) and the forthcoming
New Music: Contemporary Australian Poetry (ed. John Leonard, Five
Islands Press 2001)