DELUGE
We obey until we obey.
The moon is still over your shoulder.
There is a tide,
These first tears,
gathered to the tender blooming chalice
of rage.
During the reign of cats and dogs
the red tower
of cannibal Babel
is at your command.
We eat our words.
We obey until we obey.
In your distant north, the ice age
at the rumor of our kisses,
is split by a shrieking crack
of blue lightning.
We are not dead fonts,
signatures inked over by night—
We braid in cataracts at dusk,
a frenzy like the falling water
that between two rivers
made a sea
in the generation of Noah.
We obey until we obey.
We open the windows of the sky.
We unstop the springs of the abyss.
All the waters of earth at play
rush to gather into a clamor of rainbows.
The menagerie rides safe
in this ark, the cusp of shudders.
While the flood lasts
our cloudy covenant is writ
on the back of Leviathan,
a chord of lights
stripped from the prism,
a standing wave
riding shock after shock
down the full fathom
of our embrace
shivered in storm—
The mound of Venus
is the mount of Ararat
where this man of the soil
builds the altar
out of the confusion of tongues
and dreams of vineyards,
the daughters of men to come—
Noah, your head on her breast,
the open hatch letting in a warm breeze—
The still glistening mud,
puddles catching color
from the bow set in the cloud,
angels and saltlick,
brimstone and fire
already quenched in your eye—
The animals out in a swarm,
the family lugging the furniture
down the gangplank—
You see already the alluvial fan
spreading like a peacock’s tail
from the ribs and keel and keelson
of this ship, the clap
of two fools pegged in the joins
of quick flesh—
We obey until we obey.
Dana Pattillo, 1990
