Save As Water
Tyrone Williams
“the meeting-place of two seas.”
For the desert nomads
oasis is a place-
holder for the placelessness
of paradise, exclusive
rights to stay the middle
of nowhere where the prose
flowing underground
and the light verse
falling from above
rhyme the garden green
with red hyacinths
for the travelers tempted
to move on, temples
beneath their tents.
A body
echo of the mute
barrier between the calls
to prayer for the necks
bending back to look
up at islands rising
into a blank sky
level with the ground
on which one kneels to wash
the body with sand.
For Set
drives the waters back
to heaven, desert storms,
stirred up by Seth,
annihilate the alien
akin to the prophet,
Setekh, turning his face
away to save his servant,
as Setesh, the face
always in, as the, back
of the head, slowly revolves
into view, confounding
sight.
The fires too
are forged in bodies of water
preserved in salt, fires
the thirst of temples, much
less bodies driven
by fire, by thirst,
for water, land and bodies,
for rest always
blocked by the grave,
the crypt that entombs,
enwombs, a world to come
with new bodies
forged in the likeness
of earth, largely water.
~~~~~
Tyrone Williams teaches literature and theory at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is the author of several chapbooks and five books of poetry: c.c., On Spec, The Hero Project of the Century, Adventures of Pi and Howell. A limited-edition art project, Trump l’oeil, was published by Hostile Books in 2017. A new book of poetry is forthcoming from Omindawn Publishing, Inc. in fall 2018.