The Poetry of Emma Bolden

THE VILLAGERS SPEAK OF THEIR NEED She will give us the world         we need         to behave         like a river lives that lie         flat and true         as maps         she will give us the moon in its circles         the path to         tables         stacked high with slaughtered         fat of foul and flock          bird wings whose beatings speak         of what comes         of air         not a nothing but stream         rushing         to speak to us          the whole world straining         to tell         the landscape a story         as familiar as the story         we tell ourselves         on the flat of our hands          to tell ourselves our hands         belong to us         as does time         as does forever

THE WITCH CONTEMPLATES THE MEANING OF TIME The distance    between seed and stalk            drooping    its weight to harvesting    hands            under hem    and two fingers’ journey over a thigh’s    darkened skyline            between bared back    ground into the stone-sewn earth    and bayberries            ground    to speed the child’s slide    to the long            calm zero    of night    between the blank    field and clover            unclenching its flat    toes to tread the tract    between oak sapling            and its printed stump    between the mother    warning    and the girl’s            palm scalded    between the bandage    and the fat    pink worm            of scar    between the twig and bonfire    the soft            bed of ash    and the blue sleep

CARMINA MALEFICARIUM The faithful fail     the devil           more eager    for the sweet wine appears    bitter     consider          the evidence     of my God he must not be    on the tongue           of the fevered     keen to tempt    O Lord keep           not silence     he hath delivered me not    the actual fact     this           Thou hast seen     O Lord by public threats    O Lord keep           not silence     he breaketh the bow    he tempts     the wicked           more than the good     O Lord be not far    the devil     tries all the harder           to cutteth the spear     trouble uttered all of my bones    shall say     Lord           by the accused     mine eye hath seen his desire     O my God           his taste deceived     O my God I cry    in the daytime           let them be     as chaff but Thou    hearest           not     the threatened     subject a witch to examination    O           my God     I cry     in the daytime and in the night     season    and am not           silent     unless     God compels the devil    He hath also           prepared     for him     O mine enemies O    my God     he ordaineth           his arrows     seduce saintly virgins    all the more     the instruments           of death     God I cry they speak not peace    arrows           against the persecutors Thy praise all the day