You will go on a long journey. Louise first heard it said
behind a curtain of bead. Then came a need to know how
and now to wander an empty room, asking:
Is this to be believed? Green water leaning
against an immovable tree. A tack in her shoe
had shimmied its way to the top.
The eyes, she said, on a well-behaved route
are ultimately blind. The lung, quite naturally,
is a rooted structure.
Who sleeps, goddess of love and war.
Harlot and pure, storehouse and empty.
Her breast a stone bowl, her shoulders clean, and uncovered.
She lay on her back, receiving the silk drip of sleep
as it was poured from above. Over her, stars
being made—hydrogen cooling in columns of ash,
. . .
diamonds condensing. Awake, she said,
I love shaping my mouth, then waiting to speak.
The day was subsiding like the small drama of a drawer
pushed into an oncoming slot.
On a shelf, oddments took up an overlay of dust. The bed
by the window caught whatever bit of weather came its way.