And now I'll read a few poems from Bitters.
Many of the poems in this section
have some connection to the Bible, which
I don't think you need to know the Bible really
to follow them.
At least I hope not.
But there's a story here about King David.
"Comparative religion"
"1.
So many of the truly horrible accounts in the Bible
leave so much out.
For instance, when King David was aged
and infirm and his advisors themselves
wizened men, thinking to minister
his flesh, which gat no warm with the warmth of a virgin's
breast brought Abishag the Shunammite to his death bed.
Nothing is said of this slip of a girl.
Probably 12 or 13 given the customs of the times,
torn or sold out of her mother's house.
Or what she must have felt?
Those all too fleshy fingers gumming at her childish frock.
We are told only that she was medicinal,
a bitter herb ministering to him at all hours
though the King knew her not.
And God, he's so quiet.
It's as if she didn't exist.
As if he left the room abandoning David and his virtue
to the paltry mechanisms of the flesh.
But she, Abishag, what happened to her
after being embraced by the corpse of a man and God.
She must have been like these apricot trees, who
spun in a rush of whiteness and bees.
The living snowdrift of spring is gripped
by the last spasm of winter.
Every pedal, its intricacy shriven freezing to mud
for which we all stand about on this cold morning
and lament, and lament, and lament, and lament.
2.
Buddha in the apricot trees is waving a multitude of arms.
Each bud a cape of snow on a temperate mountain.
The opening of a baby's mouth, the decavalent dance
of becoming, an imperishable seed.
Buddha in the apricot tree is weaving a ladder to heaven out
of perishable sexual blossoms.
A boy plucks a blossom and scatters the petals
in the street.
A girl plucks a branch from the tree
and holds it to her face breathing deeply.
There is no serpent in the tree.
Just the awakening of the branches,
a galaxy of white stars.
Each one with an amber of color still burning at its core.
The bees swirling in the air.
Our desire only our desire makes a heaven of the apricot tree."