i
the unicorn tapestry
The Unicorn Rests in a Garden (from the Unicorn Tapestries) 1495–1505
French (cartoon)/South Netherlandish (woven)
it isn’t real
unless you can keep it
and then it keeps us warm inside
though all around us
the world is impossibly growing
abundant beyond forever
fecund, fertile, flourishing, flowering, fruit
we want
in order to appreciate
and kill
to curate our impossible richness
at the center of our sight
but to see the magic
of everything that grows
we must accept an end
so far away
it’s hardly real
save that it might fray to tatters
and in its death then whispering
like a truth in the heart of the world
to grow up as if reaching
for a promise from the sky
light-soaked and invisible
that belief in that so beyond us
is the magic that life is worth its costs
keep it in the contents of your hunting eye
searching up
and we are leashed to the happy promise
accepting what may come
is ourselves growing into that which isn’t
impossibly becoming
from so much of what like never was
more than could be imagined
like a contradiction
releasing us from reality’s prison
