All beauty, resonance, integrity,

Exist by deprivation or logic

Of strange position. This being so,

We can only imagine a world in which a woman

Walks and wears her hair and knows

All that she does not know. Yet we know

What her breasts are. And we give fullness

To the dream. The table supports the book,

The plume leaps in the hand. But what

Dismal scene is this? the old man pouting

At a black cloud, the woman gone

Into the house, from which the wailing starts?

The young man places a bird-house

Against the blue sea. He walks away

And it remains. Now other

Men appear, but they live in boxes.

The sea protects them like a wall.

The gods worship a line-drawing

Of a woman, in the shadow of the sea

Which goes on writing. Are there

Collisions, communications on the shore

Or did all secrets vanish when

The woman left? Is the bird mentioned

In the waves’ minutes, or did the land advance?