A Poem by Coleman Childress — Sons and Daughters

Rodin and Claudel

Rodin:

For I have noticed your hands
cased in my mind bronze
an unknowing bronze, my love,
and how delicate, how statuary
the bronze has become.

—and how it used to be fluid and move, how
I would notice the charms of your pale
dalliance—

Surely you must feel the coming end
of our saunter.
In the parlor room—
and now gone—
comes again the long interfusion of a
countenance.

Cast shadows long again-like,
immovable
as the impressions
of your might.

Claudel:

Do you see me, withstanding perceptual pity?
and you with orange skies,
ever finishing until the towers of praise
(always cast upon you, always cast upon
unnatural truth)
have ripped you down to some metal,

—O that precious metal of yours
how they say its new and exciting;
but years forget years—

and when you’re on the landing, stripped
bare,
laying near the stairs, do you think of me?
Come now live-bourne body
for I am no temporal dalliance.
Feel my wrists, see those holes there.
Unleash meticulous air and come tumbling
down the stairs.

—would you take off? notice the smell,
and see here notice the build up on my skin of—

How the sky is orange,
and because I stand for so long waiting,
I can notice it, languaging rooms
with quiet music singing sweet melodies.

Rodin:

a bit here and take some there.
I must chiseled. I must created.
spread your feet apart, like this wide
and
with the hugeness of night standed.
please be still, my love o my sanguine love.

Do you remember the evening in the
gardens?
Where the statue of holly shape-shifted
into gates of heaven to me?

With you I pleased.
With you heaven was where I made it (the
holly). And in the overture of the garden , song
winds droned to trees I heard. I saw
a statue I would
soon forget was anything.

Claudel:

A purple sky under the yew to share with.
A demure light speaking the blue to mountains.
A jazz musician loudly in parks unctuous with love.
A look from behind the metal (has
it become you I will ask).
A gift you gave was a pair of eyes
and you said put them in, gently.

—O how I love those looks peering
around with your neck reaching,
and then bending, to the torrent of words until
your eyes empty—

A glistening of purpose.
A passage from Ecclesiastes broken by
remembrance.
A shape of bodies like a pieced apart letter.
And then suddenly you will say “leave”

Rodin:

Madness comes to me madder maddened,
hoped to be done shaping some patterned.
Here given to you the feeling
of created. First comes light, then the sun.
Lettered pages scattered in cathedrals;

in heaven

I shall know my place they say.

Madder as lights of you extinguished.
Dropped hammer and chisel
out of my worn hands and on the bottom
they break by your feet spreading to leave

—out our brief candle; windows outlooking
to boughs uncombed; I will comb the
copper in front of my hands it will become
now became now leave me leave me;
for the first time your imperfect strides
that dance I hear them near the moss growing neatly
beside your boots in the footwell from cold
bathwater beside the room with gilted
propositions of work; And I hear you say
“Be still, whatever deep onward current flowing, steady
your face entirely receptive, my soul, to mirror this presence
needs, as if in the eternal holding of a breath, to sound your depth
needs hear this dark glassy clear surface waiting upon
reflections”—

as I tried casting them as Boccioni;
but you moved and stopped saying .

Claudel:

The streets are empty to my wandering.
Melodies in the leaves make love
to the smooth falling of green rhododendrons.
And you said. And I abided.

Coleman Childress currently writes and resides in Knoxville, TN. Their writing is in debt to the sounds and conversations of those who people their presence.