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holy the valley


by Jerry Ratch


 

Apparently we must endure them forever, the gods. My willingness to live among them, and love, with their high-pitched voices. To endure or be endured equally, each one of the Fates, each one of the high hearers stammering out the certainty of their love.

 

Holy, holy, holy, the use of words. Holy the valley below, committed to memory on behalf of the beauty here, or in defense, or reverence. But we know how holy really, out of long abstinence.

 

When that is over, the frail hand only touches the skin along the arm, and in a minute it is gone and forgotten. Again they'll run away from the sea and its dropped stars running over with fertility, prolific, wild, fierce, overcoming all will. And all will struggle to satiate themselves. Me included. And I should know better, but don't care.

 

She who was fertile, she who carried a load, noble, generous. The strong, the alert, we have all been quenched now, and the sweet roses bless us by being thrown down at the threshold, and still another ghost of the rose keeps questioning after me — Who can it be now, who carries his name inside her?

 

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