Leaving / Listening to Perotin's Beata Viscera by Anna Citrino

Leaving
for Richard and Catherine

Even now you are likely thinking of it,
the symphony of your leaving, violins
rising to the height of eagles, their wing tips
lit as they turn direction, incise the wind
with the hush of their departure.

Even now the gulmohar trees’ red blossoms
burn into afternoon’s air. The monsoon
will soon arrive, to wash the earth
you walked on, carry the soil’s imprint
into a stream whose end
you will not see.

World enfolding into world, you’ll return
home, unravel into the drumroll
of your journey’s finale.

Cottonwood leaves rustling in spiraled air,
you step into a river’s flow. Immersed, you
drift, unspool like music, body at rest
the wordless prayer that rises in the darkened room 

after a symphony’s final notes.




Listening to Perotin’s-Beata Viscera

A voice echoes from walls of centuries past,
a melody wandering a pathway of silvered dust
fluttering down from an opened window looking out
to a trembling twilight sea.

Birds ascend to the mountains—submerge
into canyons’ hidden depths. Sirens call
from across a cold and hollow valley
to pilgrims wandering a long path
leading away from home.

The mind sinks into sound’s green well—
rising, falling with the curls and turns
of exhaled breath. This is a birth song,
the heart’s cry declaring the pain of becoming.

Soft as incense, music swaddles you
in unresolved beauty. Moon washes
your forehead, kisses your feet.
Before you, the future burns like fire.

Shoeless, you step onto a road of flame and ice,
and begin your journey.

Anna Citrino taught abroad in six different countries. Her work has appeared in Bellowing Ark, Canary, Evening Street Review, the Paterson Literary Review, and various other literary journals. She currently lives in Sonoma County and is the author of A Space Between, Buoyant. Read more of Anna’s writing at annacitrino.com.