305

To speak your name, Bucephala,
                Is to hear the music of the sea.
                The dark body of the water
                                Moves languidly
                As humid air in summer. Weed
                Blows silently in the shallows.
                                The sun bends its
                Force upon a low mass of cloud.
                Motions that do not resonate
                                As does your name.
The wind drops in pitch.
You are safe from all damage,
                                My quiet witness.
                The water is your medium,
                It forms itself about you when
                                You dive,
                Falls from you when you fly.
                O, for such a boundary to hold!
                                You may return
                Into your origin or break away,
                Given such amnion to occupy.
What it the meaning of you, where you
Float, broken-headed, luminous, white,
                                On the dim swell?

        I will not hold your head
        In the cradle of my hands
        As I would a nodding rose.

        It is winter, and the light here
                        Is yet old enough.
        I will let you bloom, and pass.

304

Femme cueillant des fleurs, 1909

                She sits 
                        In her wooden folding chair
The feet of which compress the new grass
                            In the garden
Of her summer, which is of leisure,
Its fineness a quality of the very air :
                She leans
And places her hands on its seat, her arms
Testing the weight of her young body for
                            An infinitesimal moment.
                 She rises
To her feet, and the force of her arms carries
Into momentum.
                            How it is to move!
The shadow fades where her body rested!
Fierce love works in all the slowness of her.
                            Her body is blue.
                  She declines
Placing her left foot before her, to extract a
Flower from its sepals. Lueur : indigo, rouge.
                            It glows in its death.
Flots of pollen from the silent trees ahead.
                            Her body is red.

303

L'eau — la baigneuse, 1909

The water is composed of its desires :
                                                                 Golden and green,
The outer flourishings of evening light
                    That grace the softening edges of the trees
Fall into it,
                    Fluctuating in the movement of its surface,
Unburdening the water of its colour,
                                                                 Standing in it
As the spirit stands in the body.       Where the treetops
                    Pale into the blue ciel,
Darkening to blue as the sea past its corral,
                    They leave the water to its depth and do not
Furnish it in further colour.
                    The water resonates with cyan and amethyst,
It is its own measure in its substance.

                    At the epicentre of a system of rings,
                    A brilliant white body floats.
                    Black hair that does not meet the water,
                    White breasts that descend into it
                    Rising in networks of delicate light.
                    The river falls from her : she treads it
                    Silently with her outstretched hand.
                    No music but that of breath and motion.

At the far bank, songbirds weave their diverse ways.
                                                                 The air is fresh with
The ghosts of other swimmers, other songs.      

302

Down, snows!
                                 Our garden, dark bouche,
Swallows your ferment.
                                 Had I known your coming
Would be from darkness,
                I would have left a lamp before you,
At the heel of the path.
You father out your formlessness in shoals :
                                 Dim cloudbody, suspended
                Above the rooftops,
Drifting with the silent grace of a cephalopod.
                                 
                                                 Our thoughts may 
Dart out their patterns into the gloom,
                And you will not be exhausted in it,
For your darkness is as the soil
                That takes the fall of lightning
And the coursing rain
                         And forges itself anew in each.
Come down to us where we watch for you,
        Celebrator of surfaces, dolmen of voices!

Our memory that flies into its own forms
                                         Waits for your touch :
It is as you have been.              Come forth now.

301

We have forgotten that our life together

Is as the function of a vast organism.

A janitor wakes in his tenement, and for

A time he lays in bed and stares at the

Mantle of the window, and thinks about

The day to come, about the work that

He must do, the thousand slight concerns

That compose his daily movements.

An executive watches the facades of

Buildings pass the passenger window,

Thinking of the machinery of his life,

The causes that he sees around him

Removed from their obscure effects,

And tries to reckon what he will make.

There is equal energy in either mind.

There is equal power expended in the

Soft stature and poise of the nurse that

Tends upon an empty bed as can be seen

In the posture of a political candidate.

The universe is indifferent : it spends its

Forces absolutely and in all quadrants.

The differentiation of power we feel

Is a human dream, like the fear of a child

As she falls asleep. We are not bound

By any structure than our own. Our

Powers are commensurate with the stars.