our bodies, possessed by light

I missed yesterday for migraine reasons (I am not feeling amazing today, either, but poetry month continues, and makes me feel better about most things), so here are two poems by two different poets with the same title. The second one was already on my poem schedule, but I also really love the first one, and it made sense to post them together. Both poems do kind of amazing and completely different things with poetic structure, and both, of course, are about Scheherazade, and storytelling, and love. 

Dumb was as good as dead; 

better to utter. 

Inside a bottle, a genie. 

Abracadabra. 

Words were a silver thread

stitching the night. 

The first story I said

led to the light. 

Fact was in black and white; 

fiction was colour. 

Inside a dragon, a jewel. 

Abracadabra. 

A magic carpet took flight, 

bearing a girl. 

The hand of a Queen shut tight

over a pearl. 

Imagination was world; 

clever to chatter. 

Inside a she-mule, a princess. 

Abracadabra. 

A golden sword was hurled

into a cloud. 

A dead woman unfurled

out of a shroud. 

A fable spoken aloud

kindled another. 

Inside a virgin, a lover. 

Abracadabra. 

Forty thieves in a crowd, 

bearded and bold. 

A lamp rubbed by a lad

turning to gold. 

Talking lips don't grow cold; 

babble and jabber. 

Inside a beehive, a fortune. 

Abracadabra. 

What was lost was held

inside a tale. 

The tall stories I told

utterly real. 

Inside a marriage, a gaol; 

better to vanish. 

Inside a mirror, an ogre;

better to banish. 

A thousand and one tales;

weeping and laughter. 

Only the silent fail. 

Abracadabra. 

—Carol Ann Duffy, "Scheherazade," from The Bees, 2011. 

*

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake

                                         and dress them in warm clothes again.

      How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running

until they forget that they are horses.

            It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,

      it’s more like a song on a policeman’s radio,

                  how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days

were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple

                                                                to slice into pieces.

Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon, that means

      we’re inconsolable.

                        Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.

These, our bodies, possessed by light.

                                            Tell me we'll never get used to it.

—Richard Siken, "Scheherazade," from Crush, 2005.