Friday, September 12, 2014

Ternion: or thoughts on the usual male sorrow



Vultures always come in twos when a sky (under god!) perfumes
  the heart and mind, like both of us

and then breaks into a room where the stinking flabby-limbed
  always dart the heart (as I saw her do!)--

I mean, how can the rays and veiny leaves of my sunny day
 compare to uncomprehending legs and arms

  that won't completely entirely stop thrashing?

4 comments:

Curtis Faville said...

Is there a connection between the appearance of these birds, and the gruesome life they live, preying on carcasses?

I've always felt their ugliness symbolized some kind of evil.

Or did we just think their appearance signified how they ate?

Does evil have a face?

Conrad DiDiodato said...

Good questions, Curtis

By two vultures I mean one hideously callous act of betrayal--in any of its possible forms--and the third it always has the potential to destroy.

The vultures in my life--alas!--always wear the face of the ordinary.

Enough said or I'll become one of those pathetic poets who explain their stuff.

Conrad DiDiodato said...

Let me say this again:

By two vultures I mean one hideously callous act of betrayal--usually involving two--and the third that always has the potential to destroy: the resultant stinking flesh of the act itself QED

Ed Baker said...

vultures don't destroy. they clean-up/pick-over/eat
what has been killed and left to rot.

In Shingon, and other Buddhist sects/stream... they are "good" birds...

working at the National Zoo in the 60's... early in the a.m. just about dawn... walking up to the job-site... paused under a tree in which an hundred or so vultures were roosting... still asleep...silent... very eerie ...