On shore the trees stand looking on

While midday casts the clouds on bet

Into the meditative pond

For want of any other net.

And like a net the sky sinks in

The pensively expectant waters

And into it the bathers swim,

Fathers, mothers, sons and daughters.

Then half a dozen girls come out

Without a stir among the shoots

And rivulets of water spout

As they wring out their bathing suits.

And, firing the imagination,

The coils of fabric coil and twist

As though the serpent of temptation

Had really marked them for its nest.

O woman, on your looks I dote,

But have no mental blanks to fill;

You’re like the stricture in a throat

Seized by an unexpected thrill.

You seem created as a draft,

A stanza from another sequence,

As if indeed the handicraft

Of somebody who knew no equals,

Made of my rib while asleep I lay,

You broke the clasping arms apart,

The very image of dismay,

A spasm that grips and wrings man’s heart.