Perdita

The world is thick with women.
How will I tell whose midnight dream I am
when houses beat with them, and every bed
has held its cluster like a night-ripe vine?
The trees keep watch with their women’s eyes,
there may be granite made of women—
she may not be a woman now.

She clings to me like water.
A sea of her moves with me when I move;
transparent as God, too intimate to know,
she keeps my breathing like a secret.
My words run naked towards her.
Like animals, I know them by her mark.

Oh, mother, I am born.
I have taken your throat, your stranger hands.
Did you notice when I won them in our wordless chess?
See, the breasts have kindled on my body like stars
whose light has taken years to reach the earth.
My muscles have drunk all your shadow.
My own eyes have claimed all your tears.