Return to Cappadocia
for she I sang hath gone from me -- "In Praise of Ysolt"
for she I sang hath gone from me -- "In Praise of Ysolt"
A loop connects the Rose& Red Valleys.
Waves of rock cascade in stillness.
Where the rock is white, it looks like creme shanti
or knees draped in satin. We walked a dry water
course arched by vaults of rock
broken by skylights
where trees fan branches rim to rim above
a surge of circular motions, a vortex
of balanced counter-pulls, placidly elegant
as if scooped by an elegant hand. We climbed
& sat at a vineyard’s edge
atop the ridge taken in
by the canyon wall opposite, massive
sculpted in excesses of baroque modernism.
Mid-point we sank into an orchard
half a dozen apple trees, heavy with opulent fruit
picked & ate, & I thought of Eden as
a land before memory, without any of the gap
between desire & the objects desire invents
where memory is blank. One day
when we re-entry paradise
memory will present itself again
in the guise of what is to come
the horrors of pleasure lost
restored to the earnest tranquility
of pleasures met.
The author is a Ph.D graduate of SUNY Buffalo where he wrote his dissertation on working-class poetry. A former school bus driver, he has taught at universities in Ankara, Turkey; Seoul, South Korea; and Buffalo, NY, his native city where he studies French and is finishing his degree in Mathematics Education. Publications include At the Musarium, a chapbook of semi-procedural verse based on word frequency lists.
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