Address to Psychoanalysis

For Zoe

Unorthodox healing art,
akin more to Joseph the Egyptian’s craft of insight
than to the Greek lexicon of medical wisdom,
a match to archeologists’ hand-digging, excavating
through grottos subterranean and layers obscure
rather than the physician’s use of fine, distant media,
a bloodless operation on shielded enclosures
of human sensitivities, mind, spirit, heart and soul
—the surgeon’s goblet filled with only the transparency
of tears, cascading from veiled wounds, opaque lesions
of lives short and personal, eternal and collective.

My aid you solicited
as Homer’s kings recruiting with humbleness fair winds
their ships that would propitiously escort at sea
when setting out for the Trojan War to repossess a Beauty.
Together we sailed through waters rough, uneven waves,
you, skillful seafarer, of scouting the expert,
I, nothing but the owner of navigation leads
—cryptic, mysterious Atlases of past, forgotten routes,
guarded by amnesia squads, fenced with diversion wires.

Time and again we stumbled
on doors locked, implacable, stubborn, unyielding,
unmoved the bolts by our tenacious force, our tender begging,
till we took to dancing round a rusty hinge to ease its rigor,
a military siege of sorts but with a song, with leisure.
Now a bow, follow more, in courtship’s perfect simile,
the cheeks greet a rolling drop born of sweat or tears
—celestial blood? primal drink? stone enchanted?—
the gates surrender open, their precious wealth we share.

Our means, our strategies,
not always of the virtuous, the noble, the princely kind.
Bandits and we raided the House of restful Sleep
Abductors and we kidnapped the sweet Queen of Dreams
Satraps and we forced her speak foreign tongues and dictions
Rapists and all Innocence we made her leave behind
Thieves and we sacked the wreath the Fantasy that garnished
Vandals who desecrated the altar to Illusion
Radicals who split open the seams of masks, pretenses
Rebels who overthrew the rule of the imperious Reason
Immoralists who tore down the laws of known ethics
Customs inspectors who suspect even the scent of rose.

    *

Unorthodox healing art,
Undressed as I now stand in front of earth denuded,
I feel the hurt of my wounds roots take even deeper
in strata that transcend the fields of your esteemed métier,
that outshine and surpass truth’s glory, freedom’s splendor.
Desolate like Adam in the plot of first despair
I rise, a nascent old man stooped from an apple’s weight.

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