NYU Black Renaissance Noire Spring 2011 | Page 18

BLACK RENAISSANCE NOIRE 17 so suggestive, they are a swinging pocket watch, they induce hypnotic sleep; entranced I submerse myself slow, rip current undertow, sense of time-space slips away am I an astronomer, I don’t know? in mind’s eye — I am Leonardo da Vinci’s last brush-stroke of her eyes, and she is the grand-great-grand-great granddaughter of Mona Lisa, her eyes her demise for they will drive men mad with longing and mystery, they are the impossible placebo; I dream of being the surrealist in Paris who plots to steal her eyes from the walls of the Louvre so I can look into, Santo Spirito forever, for she is a Mesopotamian magnum opus heiress older than the stones on which she stands, her eyes a direct line to the original amulet essence of earth, pyramid of seashell and sands she whispers: I will tell you my secrets… I fall further scrying can’t help myself she says: …and my dreams dotdotdot Now maybe it was the shock of the Lorca show that shifted her shadow so, I don’t know but as she speaks of her dreams in Italian whisper-low, her breath lifts from Cave of the Crow like she goes to Point Nemo, divines herself and returns, with a crazy Nostradamus after-glow; forward in time to realise who she is, like she looked into the eyes of unknown, and her hanged man swings across her belly there on the cobble stone, in the chill of eve’s air; as the caterpillars look down on us from freezing branches their beings transform, as if warmed by this Madonna’s inner sun who breaks through, spiral spun— incredible; she gives birth to herself before me in the nocturne her head a halo as she lowers her eyes and sees into her own vision, her own apparition, in which she flies morphing-mystic; nd I could be in a play; and then a her lover advances, breaks the spell, puts his arm around her It’s time to go, are you cold? she replies: I am warm now And I return to the words of my teacher who said: You have entered the realm of gold and now I know what she meant; I would crush a priceless pearl and drink it, to stay in this moment for time: zingaro zingaro zingaro 005-sheri-d-wilson.indd 17 3/27/11 11:24 AM