agoniste

for once, I am the one who is burning bright
with love or maybe hope; the future is a breath
riding through my lungs. I am inside
and the word is only violence.

I walk into a dream and find
a memory of consensus; we are playing
without strategy or memory. Scattered
as the Hellenes at Aulis, where a girl
is always walking in the breathless
midafternoon to the top of a hill.

There is no hind tangled
in the scrub of the hill,
but glowing, I walk to the sacrifice.
If that knife comes down, I
will open and release blood, breath,
all of the vital things flying
from me, bright birds into the fire.

January 1998