Dennis Greene MiPo January Issue Volume 11

January through March 2003 ~ Volume 11
Publisher D. Menendez, EIC Jim Christ
Editors Janet Kenny & Ani Gjika - Joe Carcel Ghost Editor

it may be cold where you are but at MiPo it is always sizzling

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Ophelia

Dennis Greene

(A body)
As it happened they found her floating there,
her hair cut like a nun's, the clothes that bore her up
then dragged her down spread all around; her father
dead, her brother so far gone that death was little more
than cause for comment. 'then she is drowned,' he said,
'too much of water has she, poor Ophelia', or words to
that effect, and with her own mind gone she came with
songs and holding dead men's fingers to the drowning.

(either wholly)
She came complete, all in one part, so like the willow tree
she trailed her fingers in the weeping water. A weeping tree,
too set symbolically to save her, and yet she sang sweet songs,
snatches of tunes, 'alas my love you do me wrong' but who she
sung about, though we could guess, there was no saying.

(or partially)
She was a mermaid, part scale, part skin, a fish in air
a woman in deep water, an owl that once was a baker's daughter
(how what we are becomes all we can be), she felt a need
to drown in water deeper than a puddle, to trust the sharks,
to breathe the deepest seas; she drowned in air, she would
have drowned in sorrow

(immersed)
There's something about being underwater. Not deep in Perspex
tubes watching the sharks, but truly, madly, deeply under water,
the light transfused, defused as you sink down to mud and rest
and breathe the liquid in until who knows if you are it or it is you.
Ophelia, mad, can find no reason in it; can sing no version of it.

(in any liquid)
Drip, drip the rain's slow song, you are the earth again.
Did we just pull you from the drain to fill a ditch? Did Gertrude
whine 'sweet to the sweet', did Yorick really move aside for this?
The shovel pours another blessing on your head: the jester
shares the joke, the limelight, and his bed.

(undergoes an up thrust )
Later we'll put them all away; the shovel in its shed, the tears
that no-one cried, the prayers that no-one took the time to pray,
the things we thought, implied or said, these things we'll pack inside
a play, inside a song we'll give your name. Oh isn't love confusing. Deep
is the ground where love is found-- and worms have let the air in.

(or apparent loss of weight)
It seems the air weighs nothing. It seems to slip through
lungs as once it slipped through yours; we breathe you in and
breathe you out again, I feel the willow move in streams of air;
do your lungs move there in the afterlife? does your voice use
the earth as we use air? The air is still, and we are all

(exactly equal)
exactly equal

(to the weight )
to the task

(of the displaced)
of being dead.

(liquid)
Songs fill my head, my sweet Ophelia.
Drowned, drowned in song, goodnight,
it's all been said.