George Moore
I have grown tired of the incessant I.
Like others I have come to see it suspiciously
as a scorpion raising its telson high above its head
and that crescent is the curve of the universe,
and all the world a desert in which this fearful creature
lurks in the darkness made by the shadow of itself.
The neurotoxic I,
the venom of which can paralyze or kill,
the prey of which is none other than the poet’s self,
who cannot face the pain of the scorpion’s sting,
the deathstalker,
Leiurus quinquestriatus,
the Latin lingers in his body,
the latter no longer a vessel but a prison
in which the I competes with the eye,
the inner blindness with the outer vision,
battles with the ego in the shells of its Others,
although it knows those shells are empty holes,
nocturnal underbellies of stones, filled with scorpions too,
and they mate in a dance of communion,
promenade à deux, juddering and shaking
at the very touch, rising to transcend themselves
in the cheliceral kiss,
infecting a little venom into the ones they love
to keep them still to feed upon
for the scorpion comes back and eats its mate,
the I that sees itself as rapier or blade
is prey to the other scorpions of the world,
those possum selves, those lizard lovers,
the centipedes of others who want so much,
the birds with faces that reflect the past,
succumb to the single self
that raises its armored tail only to fall under foot.
