THE KABUKI WIFE AND THE KATCHINA HUSBAND

Facing opposite skies they sit
Oceans apart, the Kabuki wife
And the Katchina husband.
Apogee in the East
Presents perigee in the West
When they dance through their wide orbit
Of irreconcilable separation.

Who has called such fantasy
Beings forth into
This impossible marriage
Of rice and corn?
No less than that persistent
Human longing for inhuman qualities
In communities of frail,
Earth-bound beings
Pulls this bride and groom
Into extreme, blocked features.

To the face of the Kabuki wife
Layers of modest reverence,
Of honor and binding fidelity
Are applied. Then carrying this
Frozen identity she rises and walks.
Her mincing steps by tabi-clad feet
Trace the perimeters of passions
So heightened in force that when
She falls upon them all delicacy
Must be crushed. She is mourned.
And in sensible economy
Resurrected to dance again.

Over the head of the Katchina husband
A helmet of vision rimmed in
Feathers, horn, claws and hides
is drawn, shining with promise
And rattling with inherent potency.
The reverberations of the earth
Summoned by his stamping feet swell
Until, losing his balance, he falls.
The helm is lifted from his head
And stored in reverent darkness,
Where it waits only a little while
For a new body willing to carry it.

As long as crops ripen
And die; grow and ripen again;
As long as sun and moon move
Through the long, cold space-defined
Seclusions around our fretted, drawn lives--
Until parallels reach so far out
that they bend and converge;
That is the term for which
The Kabuki wife and the Katchina husband
Must dance the wedding apart.
Upon the one earth, and
Eternally reflecting the dry,
Sharp powder of dream lives--
Bearing sectioned, defined,
And highly-colored features
Of an immutable logic
They move us all, their reborn children
Into their perpetually unrealized union.

By Elizabeth Ramadori


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