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Aubade: Isle La Motte

from Open Hearth by Shane Murphy

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lyrics

Attention turned to the pasty moon

Always the same clay face I have seen
St Anne in dapple-gray light with palms
Out as though nudging us forward
When the cold pulsed like a blister

Deep water is a psalm we lean toward
As ancestors certain only of its mystery
Champlain's small waves crumble like gypsum
On the rocks

Where founders stabbed
The earth with bronze crosses and votive
Deity We took it all in stride
From stone patriots to Mary with a flickering
Wick at her bare feet
She is guarded
She was sculpted with a constellation
Of blemishes on her forehead

And her eyes and how many others
Made the Mohawks fear that island

***

I remember it now in chiaroscuro
Above the stampede of clouds in winter

I spent an hour on the atlas
Of the tarmac where the final wet
Stains of the season bid me adieu
Here six miles high in degenerate sleep
The prattle the polite turbulence the sense
That I'm lifting toward heaven toward something new
With a gusty voice with silence
Toward a heaven cherub-heavy
And its host of floury bodies

Oh let me not rise before the sun

The universe I eat I drift
The universe is roe with globs of stiff butter
We do our best to prick it with airplanes
We wonder what color blood snakes through it
We cling to fantasy in dreams for fear
Of waking empty

***

There is a home I imagine
Its cobblestone path is crumbly with wear
It is anywhere There is rubble on TV
Phone wires outside are crow-bent and crowbars
Pry screeching nails from the shingled roof
As from a casket
And doesn't the sun
Rise white as cream there
Isn't it a dimple
On the delft face of sky

I will go
Again to Isle La Motte and touch my hand
Against the storm-licked shrine whose blood
Is thicker than Champlain's and mine
And whoever is there on the island
In her own sad eternity with a worked smile

Protecting nothing any longer
But praying still that we thank Her

credits

from Open Hearth, released February 1, 2011
Written, performed and recorded by Shane Murphy.

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Shane Murphy Poughkeepsie, New York

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