Heliotrope

Past beautiful,
stuck in the dust

of a road, her thin
branched head

with its baby hair
and dozen white eyes

so anthropomorphized
and mute—her lover

going down the sky
daily in his flaming steps

and she with her
padlocked gaze—

eternal follower!
Yet the circle’s story

fixes her
at its centre—

her greenish rooted
limbs keep company

with all the buried
girls and boys

whose lost testes
and ovules stir to life

again this month—
under the soft rain

of a god’s grief
the hyacinth and lotus

come, with narcissus
on his sex-struck stem.

– Caitríona O’Reilly

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