Azrael

[EXTRACTS]

[extracts taken from an undated sketchbook. The twenty-two entries in this sketchbook are dated 17 April to 21 September, with no year indicated.]

17 April ____

The black wood gleaming and dreaming pale blossoms and glistning [sic] with drops of a maiden's weeping where nightbirds carried her from her virgin sleeping sinister birds flown from the lust of a dead man's thinking snaring the pearl of her tender dreaming.

And far in the wake of a sea of sand enchanted by voices of stones and wind he seeks his name and his nameless child in phantoms of flowers buried therein.

And I who am mother and lover of both disciple of death and daughter of dreams spawn of the hawk and the cave of the world am destined to brew the healing cup to awaken love from the deadly spell.

Undated

[H]is leather coat is sewn with pearls his shirt is stained with dragon's blood and golden stones about his throat thus charmed he floats in his lunar boat and plots the death of the sun.

. . . valley where death sleeps with white moths on every flowered bough and birds of the burning dying sun ensnare our looks of love.

With gloves of antelope he strokes my [throat?] and sinks his jeweled tounge [sic] into the wound that moans for peace.

We two longing for that kiss that blends the hours into bridges for the special [sic] sea where birds of death follow our wake in the scent of our love and the sound of our sighing—bound together in the fatal wave—back to back and Janus-faced—we die touch—we two as one—and thus we ring the earth with outward visioning.

25 May ____

It is long since the King stood upon this hill and viewed the sunken city of Abiegnus. Silver horns ascribe the boundaries of his kingdom and carpets adorn the streets for she has walked here and never placed her foot upon the earth.

The fortress is surmounted by an iron trident that supports a whirling golden disk that rips the wind and runs the arrows of the sun into the stars.

Here we feasted on our hearts and drunken upon the nuptial cup we danced a thousand nights of lust beneath a sea of grief,

21 September ____

Now gentle husband bind the limbs that grew from blood and stone and grass and make a bed from scented earth in which to sleep and pray.

The secret heat that burned the blood gave birth to worlds in unknown seas and cells of light within the shell of mindless searching in the night spawned suns upon those frozen shores.

[422]