The Shape of Death
What does love look like?
We knowthe shape of death.
Death is a cloudimmense and awesome.
At first a lidis lifted from the eye of light:there is a clap of sound, a white blossombelches from the jaw of fright,a pillared cloud churns from white to graylike a monstrous brain that bursts and burns,then turns sickly black, spilling away,filling the whole sky with ashes of dread;thickly it wraps, between the clean seaand the moon, the earth's green head.
Trapped in its cocoon, its choking breathwe know the shape of death:
Death is a cloud.
What does love look like?
Is it a particle, a star -invisible entirely, beyond the microscope and Palomar?
A dimension unimagined, past the length of hope?
Is it a climate far and fair that we shall never darediscover?
What is its color, and its alchemy?
Is it a jewel in the earth-can it be dug?
Or dredged from the sea?
Can it be bought?
Can it be sown and harvested?
Is it a shy beast to be caught?
Death is a cloud,immense, a clap of sound.
Love is little and not loud.
It nests within each cell, and itcannot be split.
It is a ray, a seed, a note, a word,a secret motion of our air and blood.
It is not alien, it is near-our very skin-a sheath to keep us pure of fear.
May Swenson
Другие работы автора
October
1 A smudge for the horizon that, on a clear day, shows the hard edge of hills and buildings on the other coast Anchored boats all head one way: north, where the wind comes from You can see the storm inflating out of the west A dark ...
Staying At Eds Place
I like being in your apartment, and not disturbing anything As in the woods I wouldn't want to move a tree,or change the play of sun and shadow on the ground The yellow kitchen stool belongs right thereagainst white plaster I haven'...
The Lowering
The flag is folded lengthwise, and lengthwise again, folding toward the open edge, so that the union of stars on the blue field remains outward in full view; a triangular folding is then begun at the striped end, by bringing the corner of the fold...
Motherhood
She sat on a shelf, her breasts two bellies on her poked-out belly, on which the navel looked like a sucked-in mouth— her knees bent and apart, her long left arm raised, with the large hand knuckled to a bar in the ceiling— her right hand clamping...
