by other poets

Girl in Love

That's my window. This minute So gently did I alight From sleep--was still floating in it. Where has my life its limit And where begins the night? I could fancy all things around me Were nothing but I as yet; Like a crystal's depth, profoundly Mute, translucent, unlit. I have space to spare inside me For the stars, too: so full of room Feels my heart; so lightly Would it let go of him, whom For all I know I have started To love, it may be to hold. Strange, as if never charted, Stares my fortune untold. Why is it I am bedded Beneath this infinitude, Fragrant like a meadow, Hither and thither moved, Calling out, yet fearing Someone might hear the cry, Destined to disappearing Within another I.

Put out my eyes

Put out my eyes, and I can see you still, Slam my ears to, and I can hear you yet; And without any feet can go to you; And tongueless, I can conjure you at will. Break off my arms, I shall take hold of you And grasp you with my heart as with a hand; Arrest my heart, my brain will beat as true; And if you set this brain of mine afire, Then on my blood-stream I yet will carry you.

Child in Red

Sometimes she walks through the village in her little red dress all absorbed in restraining herself, and yet, despite herself, she seems to move according to the rhythm of her life to come. She runs a bit, hesitates, stops, half-turns around... and, all while dreaming, shakes her head for or against. Then she dances a few steps that she invents and forgets, no doubt finding out that life moves on too fast. It's not so much that she steps out of the small body enclosing her, but that all she carries in herself frolics and ferments. It's this dress that she'll remember later in a sweet surrender; when her whole life is full of risks, the little red dress will always seem right.

The Secret in the Cat

I took my cat apart to see what made him purr. Like an electric clock or like the snore of a warming kettle, something fizzed and sizzled in him. Was he a soft car, the engine bubbling sound? Was there a wire beneath his fur, of humming throttle? I undid his throat. Within was no stir. I opened up his chest as though it were a door: no whisk or rattle there. I lifted off his skull: no hiss or murmur. I halved his little belly but found no gear, no cause for static. So I replaced his lid, laced his little gut, His heart into his vest I slid and buttoned up his throat. His tail rose to a rod and beckoned to the air. Some voltage made him vibrate warmer than before. Whiskers and a tail: perhaps they caught some radar code emitted as a pip, a dot-and-dash of woolen sound. My cat a kind of tuning fork? amplifier? telegraph? doing secret signal work? His eyes elliptic tubes: there's a message in his stare. I stroke him but cannot find the dial.