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Song of the Dying Amazon

Poem by Shirley Tannenbaum

Hear! My Beloveds
Hear me singing in the dust.
Mine is a voice
caught in a web
of time and place.

As I go down to that river
and cross over
to lie down with my sisters
I will sing a new song.

From my mountain top
I look down and see my death
Calmly, I descend
to meet it.

Powerful as living,
in my communion
with life,
I have consumed the host
of pain in unflagging drafts,
tenacious
as my passion for love.
And, my Beloveds,
I am true to my passions.

There are lost loves
abandoned loves
new loves
and dead loves
still singing from the grave.

Beloveds,
out of my dust,
I tell you of one life,
particular and peculiar,
set in time and place
and not long enough
to dry the springs of love.
And, if in winding sheets,
I am still singing,
My voice will send praise
into the air
into the sky
into the forests
and glens.

Saying:
All glory to the time
and life
Praise be to the pleasure
and the pain
the wounding
And healing.

And, my loves,
even knowing that life is brief
and the end is always death,
I would say yes again
yes to life
yes to flesh
that burgeons
and decays
and ask again to die.

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