poetry

To Sullen Earth
by Zenaida French

With the tired old giant’s boots
I have walked your seven seas
To search the craggy deep for pearls
In drowned men’s teeth.

Ravaging for rubies
Under smoking rubble and searing fumes
I have ransacked bombed-out cities
And heard Lot’s wife curse prophesies
As she watched within her tomb.

I fled.
But stumbling in a forest’s gray-green gloom
Among the roots and trunks of trees
Writhing in a sudden storm

I chanced upon the spotted glory
Of a wild orchid hanging from the
Topmost branch of a fern-choked tree
As it sang, trembling, in the lashing rain

And I lay there, singing
As the petals danced in the drenching rain
And my streams ran deep
Into the sopping earth.

From barren dust
I am become steamy clay and
Blood-red lava crushing
Emerald mountains
To faithless dreams.

1982
(The Literary Apprentice,1982)
(FOCUS Philippines, June 1983)

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