POEM

O HEART: this is a dream I had, or not a dream. Lovingly, lovingly, I wept, but my tears did not rhyme. In the year of my mother’s blood, when I was born, She buried my innocent head in a field, because the earth Was sleepy with the winter. And I spoke the corn, And I cried the clover up, with the dewy mouth of my mirth. In the honey of summer my brain conceived: a child, I flowered Over the maiden-stalks, drinking sweet upper light, For I was intimate with the sun, till he devoured Me utterly, O Heart, his tenderest neophyte. So I died. Small gluttonous birds picked on my limpid brow, My pale drooped feet were manacled with rushing worms; And when I was sufficiently dead (Torturer Thou!) I was born again. Dissolving, memory reforms The cyclic hour I pulled life’s bony root, slow inch By inch, from its loamy trap; shrilly, like a mandrake, screamed To rip the cord, suck liberal air, after the pinch Of planetary rock. Womanly, a shadow combed Her dark tremendous hair beyond the violet border Of my sleep. Strong passionate hands I had, but could not find The red position of her heart, nor the subtle order Of her lips and breasts, nor the breathing cities of her mind. Lovingly, lovingly, I wept for her absent eyes, Large pity of her thought; I broke the spine of my pride Upon a stone, seeing she did not recognize My tears, because our sorrows did not coincide. Softly grieving, ironic with a smile forlorn, I took my baffled head and buried it under the corn. O Heart: this is a dream I had, or not a dream.