THREE POEMS

Things shift with each version of you Comtessa, your name, the one you loved, how the trobairitz found rooms of their own to compose, an idiosyncrasy of inheritance à l’Occitan, or the other occupants, off crusading, were busy compelling others to bear their cross. But in all, you sent this song down to us, the only to survive from that cité des dames, your score- settling rhymes clinging more to the flesh than most of your fellows’ fantasies in this game of fin’amor. Still, we don’t know whether you yourself sang the tale you didn’t want to tell, or, as in your verse you sent a messenger, whether your mes- meric melismas sailed over the spare drone of the hurdy- gurdy or were mirrored by cithern and psaltery, lute and vielle, or whether, like the arab- esques of a rebec longing for a rabāb, you too were dreaming of Jerusalem.

Passengers take turns mile-marking the siloed straightaway, flat and broad as vowels. Gaze fixed, one finds infinity’s freedom in moonlit rows of newly-planted corn, leans into the light trails of farmhouse lanterns painting the night sky for passersby. The vireo too takes the red eye, a nocturnal migrant come to canopy for the season. They don’t know it yet, but it will prove to be a good one, familiar. Walks along the banks of the Turkey, the organ at St. Wenceslaus, games of darda, pilsner amber as fields of grain. A summer rhapsody, Bohemian. One that will be remembered, and forgotten, burying down into rich black soil, Black Hawk’s, the many layers that have sung, and hope to sing, this land, Driftless, is ours. But this night, as the carriage from Calmar turns onto Main Street, the passengers shiver, not accustomed to such dark.

With one look across the room, gilding each other with their gaze, two tenors counter the paeans to power with theirs to each other. From the first high-octane con- sonants of encounter, this day in court, for a woman first created, is wholly theirs. They have a ball, ornaments ever-more daring, anticipating the articulation of the body, the mimesis so come-hither, so electric, it’s all accomplished, this time around, quite bloodlessly.