and there was a booming above you that night, black airplanes flew over the sea and they were lowing and shifting like beached whales shelled snails as you strained and you squinted to see the retreat of their hairless and blind cavalry
you froze in your sand shoal prayed for your poor soul sky was a bread roll, soaking in a milk-bowl and when the bread broke, fell in bricks of wet smoke my sleeping heart woke, and my waking heart spoke
then there was a silence you took to mean something: mean, run, sing for alive you will evermore be and the plague of the greasy black engines a-skulkin' has gone east while you're left to explain them to me released from their hairless and blind cavalry
with your hands in your pockets, stubbily running to where I'm unfresh, undressed and yawning well, what is this craziness? this crazy talking? you caught some small death when you were sleepwalking
it was a dark dream, darlin', it's over the firebreather is beneath the clover beneath his breathing there is cold clay, forever a toothless hound-dog choking on a feather
but I took my fishingpole (fearing your fever) down to the swimminghole, where there grows bitter herb that blooms but one day a year by the riverside - I'd bring it here: apply it gently to the love you've lent me
while the river was twisting and braiding, the bait bobbed and the string sobbed, as it cut through the hustling breeze and I watched how the water was kneading so neatly gone treacly nearly slowed to a stop in this heat - frenzy coiling flush along the muscles beneath
press on me: we are restless things webs of seaweed are swaddling you call upon the dusk of the musk of a squid shot full of ink, until you sink into your crib
rowing along, among the reeds, among the rushes I heard your song, before my heart had time to hush it! smell of a stone fruit being cut and being opened smell of a low and of a lazy cinder smoking
and when the fire moves away fire moves away, son why would you say I was the last one?
scrape your knee; it is only skin makes the sound of violins when you cut my hair, and leave the birds the trimmings I am the happiest woman among all women
and the shallow water stretches as far as I can see knee-deep, trudging along a seagull weeps; "so long"
I'm humming a threshing song until the night is over hold on! hold on! hold your horses back from the fickle dawn
I have got some business out at the edge of town candy weighing both of my pockets down 'til I can hardly stay afloat, from the weight of them (and knowing how the common-folk condemn what it is I do, to you, to keep you warm being a woman, being a woman)
but always up the mountainside you're clambering groping blindly, hungry for anything: picking through your pocket linings - well, what is this? scrap of sassafras, eh Sisyphus?
I see the blossoms broke and wet after the rain little sister, he will be back again I have washed a thousand spiders down the drain spiders ghosts hang soaked and dangelin' silently from all the blooming cherry trees in tiny nooses, safe from everyone - nothing but a nuisance; gone now, dead and done be a woman, be a woman!
though we felt the spray of the waves we decided to stay 'til the tide rose too far we weren't afraid, 'cause we know what you are and you know that we know what you are
awful atoll - o, incalculable indiscreetness and sorrow! bawl, bellow: Sibyl sea-cow, all done up in a bow
toddle and roll; teeth an impalpable bit of leather while yarrow, heather and hollyhock awkwardly molt along the shore
are you mine? my heart? mine anymore?
stay with me for awhile that's an awfully real gun I know