1
I feel suspended in you now, silent.
Bare. Jangling in the cleft between your ribs.
The cold is like a stake, driven into
The womb of memory.
Driven into that terrible heaven where
We collect the milk of worn out stars.
2
I curl the moon into a Japanese lamp
And weave it like a golden thread into the dark.
Next winter we will be flowers, nested
Underneath the snow,
Our eyelids cut off
With a paper knife.
3
Like invisible birds, bands of angels
In the snow.
I am afraid of their eyes, sunburned
And barren like darkness;
The solemn flapping of their wings,
Their songs like stars.
4
The body is shattered by faith,
Stripped and hacked to nothing.
I am brought out to a stone in the woods,
And laid out, my throat cut like a dog’s.
The moon rises slick with gore,
“O! Creature of love.”
5
Birches, visible now because
The stars are falling.
Someone has picked the night
Open with the rib of man.
To drink, I must break up the ice that has
Clustered around the well.
