red sumac
SCENE D
The image of a late middle-aged woman envelopes the entire screen in color. We see in her skin a mesh of fine wrinkles in sharp relief. All that is visible of her are parts of her face, the rest in deep shadow. Her hair drawn up in a bun leaks a few errant strands. She smiles bittersweetly, lost in thought, or a memory.
—MUSIC BEGINS—a choir of flutes
A soft gymnopedie is played. Each flute sounds one note of an ascending/descending Phrygian scale; some are doubled, all improvisational. One instrument quiets at the end of each poem until there is complete silence before the last poem is recited.
CHORUS LEADER
Of hunger, of thirst
only chains of mountains
are truly free . . .
and sand & stone . . .
and rain-washed bone . . .
LISBETH
Tonight, my Arion,
make of my body
your tensing strings,
one to lull each of the dolphins
that leaps within my breast
As I shook my tresses out
your eyes began to comb them
with desire;
globes were spinning and on mine,
the palms that spun them
Heat, first fire
of a history of love:
stroll through my body's oasis,
pick ripened dates and let
my siroccos soothe your brow
The straw that broke
not the camel's back
but made it tremble
was the wandering of your hands
along my hills and valleys
Never end that kiss
for all the lovely beasts
are kneeling
before the fire
with kindling in their mouths
As you kiss your way
to my lotus bloom
let its fragrance mix
with a drift of rain
through the open window
Fangs that woke
the dream in bone, its lovely ache,
hasten their delicious pain
from nerve to nerve
to slay then slake
. . . but now
to the petal-less flower
no longer flies the bee
where only small white spiders rest
as breezes slowly rock them
I have known great love,
yes, I've known it;
those who seek no deeper stone
beneath the mica's cloudy depths
see not into a lover's heart
You clothed me
in the dust of footsteps
when you vanished:
don't linger, come back and wash it away
with the rain of your lilting glance . . .
Are your horses
trampling another's fields just now
or is it only
the drip of rain from eaves
that ticks away the hours?
How it pains me,
the wound you left with your going,
and yet in a sprinkling of salt,
all your beauty still yet moves,
a balm in racing blood . . .
Now the image onscreen tracks away to show that LISBETH sits in a wheelchair.
LISBETH
Last night
you came to me in dream:
I swept your hair aside
to see them, eyes as blue
as Machias Bay. . .
and all that summer
I languished till wild sumac turned
its deepest red,
and where we both had walked,
a does instructs her yearlings...
The screen darkens. The last two poems are spoken in the dark as a round that includes the CHORUS and CHORUS LEADER.
Though this morning
feels no different,
O first love,
what New Year's streets will hear
your echoing footsetps?
Though an old familiar house
spins nonetheless on the axes
of its well-worn ways,
it's the lilacs that hold
the still point still. . .
The CHORUS LEADER ends her part of the round by saying “the still point” only, omitting the final “still.”
LISBETH’s image fades, her manikin’s shortly after.