| Venus and the Sea When I return from poetry as from a sea-shore To the streets of dream, what is left on waking Is whatever I was full of, naming itself. A colour walks around, with people hidden in it. A summer that was meant to mean nothing Lifted his ten fingers like a fence between us, Or snow that does not fall. I felt him through An envelope, a glove touching a glove. His sound-curves so quivering, I was shorn Of all words, and hummed him with my eyes And mouth. The incomplete opening of his mouth Lives in my hand like a wound, the thought Of the subtraction and the narrowing circle Is like a turn-of-the-century spring along A delayed fuse or a graph of deep Confusions, reaching the first trees. It begins in an hour like the door-mirror Of a wardrobe cracking the mismemory Of an overremembered window-door Wiping off the painted pinpoint pupils And the ringlets of music with a smile Waking in the separate mouth beside me. Collection of the Artist | |
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