Any Absence Longer Than a Year
When approaching, each man will lift up a string of fish
overlapping like scales, until the woman in each case
weeps at the sight: here is a man covered in silver.Oh let Love's soldier leave the fish to swim
and instead strip naked, rub himself with leaves
and petals of the flowers that grow outside his woman's tent:
this is her smell, it must perfume him like a thought
of her own - as if she had dreamt him and dreams him now.Let him gather the small bones scattered in the yard - the record
of days she has waited: in grief she spent these, cast them out.
She will see him squatting in the dirt, fashioning her a bracelet.for C.
July 9, 80