Patient Like a Poet

~ a poem for us ~

Gustav Klimt

Patient like a poet

she waits

unleafed and deflowered

she waits

sheathed in

light of frozen stars

she waits

in a skull’s cistern

cry feral children

where are you mother

they ask.

Abandoned

by pantheons

she waits,

ivied and gilded

rubied and ochred,

with iron and copper

between her thighs

she waits.

Crucibles and foundries

dead in her palm

she weeps

enmeshed in sorrow

she calls

to a fabulist

perhaps or a

daemon lover —

anoint me with hope

she sobs.

To grant absolution

she waits…

Farida Haque