Uxmal

Uxmal

In the Yucatan at Uxmal, the full moon

lights gray stones, shines behind palm leaves

on great hewn stones.  Cautious as an ape,

the moon slips through sky.  Whiter than bone,

the round stone hangs above temple and earth—

bright, tethered captive in the eyes of a lizard.

Mayans call the iguana, mystic lizard—

silent temple guardian by day, but in full moon-

light, he jerks and jumps about the hot earth,

singing lunar songs, dancing on palm leaves,

praising leaf, stone, and sky.  He holds a bone

to the stars, remains of some ancient man or ape.

How can the quiet iguana praise life—ape

wild abandon and zeal—so unlike a lizard?

He sees the tourists walk with old bone

steps in the great halls of Uxmal, no moon

fury ever in their eyes.  Immune to leaves

and stars, they sweat, grow fat, ignore the earth.

I came to Uxmal—hottest place on earth.

Sunburned, young, I felt the eyes of an ape

at every turn:  picking through cold leaves

of lettuce at lunch, watching breathless lizards

in the sun, climbing stone steps to the moon.

He was the sad, howling flesh on my every bone.

I have seen the beauty of sculpted bone,

lying in the high green grass of the earth,

shaped smooth and white like the curved moon,

seen in myself both precious bone and ape.

I have walked like tourists and heard lizards

sing—a motion in the wind, in the leaves.

But I am more than bone or ape, I am leaves—

their delicate tracing of veins like bone,

the sound of the wind in them like lizard

song.  They turn yellow and red, fall to earth

and burn in a slow fire of musk like apes

smell—they flame in the shadow of the moon.

I am like the lyric leaves plunging to the earth,

full and faceted—beauty, bones, stone, ape—

Sing lizard, praise our lives to the white moon.

Sestina written in James Dickey's year-long seminar in verse composition during grad school (1990s) at University of South Carolina.