SEA
When I woke, it was not skin I felt upon my body. Night
had fallen over me, I wore the dark. Now the moon might rise
within me. None would see it, but its rising would become the shape
my body has. You lay beside me sleeping, the one sound your breath.
If we are anywhere, this is our geography, an air
that is the score of our flesh, an annotation spelling us.
I do not think that it was you beside me --: it seemed to me a sound
that was arising from a sea, and I invisible was lying
in the dark beside it, the sea exhaling waves. If the gods
were anymore, they would not stoop to speech, but we, when they were in
their ecstasies, would leap into the air, spilling over from
their mouths, sufficient words for them to name an order of the world.
So you would become the sea, a sea of sacred utterance,
and I the hearing of the sea, its answer to the moon in me.
When I woke, it was not skin I felt upon my body. Night
had fallen over me, I wore the dark. Now the moon might rise
within me. None would see it, but its rising would become the shape
my body has. You lay beside me sleeping, the one sound your breath.
If we are anywhere, this is our geography, an air
that is the score of our flesh, an annotation spelling us.
I do not think that it was you beside me --: it seemed to me a sound
that was arising from a sea, and I invisible was lying
in the dark beside it, the sea exhaling waves. If the gods
were anymore, they would not stoop to speech, but we, when they were in
their ecstasies, would leap into the air, spilling over from
their mouths, sufficient words for them to name an order of the world.
So you would become the sea, a sea of sacred utterance,
and I the hearing of the sea, its answer to the moon in me.