The Knife

Can I explain this to you? Your eyes

are entrances the mouths of caves

I issue from wonderful interiors

upon a blessed sea and a fine day,

from inside these caves I look and dream.

Your hair explicable as a waterfall

in some black liquid cooled by legend

fell across my thought in a moment

became a garment I am naked without

lines drawn across through morning and evening.

And in your body each minute I died

moving your thigh could disinter me

from a grave in a distant city:

your breasts deserted by cloth, clothed in twilight

filled me with tears, sweet cups of flesh.

Yes, to touch two fingers made us worlds

stars, waters, promontories, chaos

swooning in elements without form or time

come down through long seas among sea marvels

embracing like survivors in our islands.

This I think happened to us together

though now no shadow of it flickers in your hands

your eyes look down on ordinary streets

If I talk to you I might be a bird

with a message, a dead man, a photograph.