Eidolon

i.

It was not me, but a phantom
whose oath
a variable star
moldering in the reliquary
is doubt.

I have not unsealed love, its taproot
mouthing blackness
nor seized the fairer woman
to purge from her her song—

This hell-house of primogeniture, bookish
and pale quartering what is also
its own and only rule
this: fire
and the fire that comes from fire.

ii.

Helen, dispirited
camera-bound Helen
fetching the paper from the front lawn in her dressing gown a lot of the time
and knowing when the phone will ring
seconds before by the click of its current

Demi-goddess—not woman, not god
disembodied like a bowl turned over and its loaf thumping out
Helen
Queen of never-mind-the-time, of you can’t run on gin for all the everlasting
And such

moths, broiling airlessly in a sodium bulb
smell of it on her front porch
lights on home