I
The strange part is his head. Her head. The strangely ripened
Domes over the brain, swollen nacelles
For some large containment. Lobed glands
Of some large awareness. Eerie the eel’s head.
This full, plum-sleeked fruit of evolution.
Beneath it, her snout’s a squashed slipper-face,
The mouth grin-long and perfunctory,
Undershot predatory. And the iris, dirty gold
Distilled only enough to be different
From the olive lode of her body,
The grained and woven blacks. And ringed larger
With a vaguer vision, an earlier eye
Behind her eye, paler, blinder,
Inward. Her buffalo hump
Begins the amazement of her progress.
Her mid-shoulder pectoral fin – concession
To fish-life – secretes itself
Flush with her concealing suit: under it
The skin’s a pale exposure of deepest eel
As her belly is, a dulled pearl.
Strangest, the thumb-print skin, the rubberised weave
Of her insulation. Her whole body
Damascened with identity. This is she
Suspends the Sargasso
In her inmost hope. Her life is a cell
Sealed from event, her patience
Global and furthered with love
By the bending stars as if she
Were earth’s sole initiate. Alone
In her millions, the moon’s pilgrim,
The nun of water.
II
Where does the river come from?
And the eel, the night-mind of water –
The river within the river and opposite –
The night-nerve of water?
Not from the earth’s remembering mire
Not from the air’s whim
Not from the brimming sun. Where from?
From the bottom of the nothing pool
Sargasso of God
Out of the empty spiral of stars
A glimmering person