…gone, gone, muslins bartered for moths, gone,
              gone as far to me, as far as Egypt, gold, calico, as far his
                            brass, fustian, his boot’s rosettes, his ankles

I’m thrown between, on a wheel, spancelled, his wet hands, my neck,
              cupping, building, loosening, lengthening, the hole in me,
                            his hands clenching far away as far from me as me, far where—

wherever he is not there I am not also

              Where he is not, my mind—my silk, my subject—

                            Gone where—where is my—my mind—where—

Where my mind is not is not where my mind is not—

                            Where my mind is not, there, here—

Where he is not the light dresses without the pierce
              without the dwelling this floor, this roof, even far Egypt,
                            even this dimity and mother-of-all this shame

the shameless cracked open sods of the Ephesians even,

              I am a grave where, when he is not inside,

                            gone, gone—gone as muslins at the market, as silks at the damp—

Inside I keep for him, I glance out for only him, but thresholds trumpet

              In all the rush of him water dams for him threshes for him

                            The woof and the warp and all the loom for him—

Proves his law the daisy shucked for him

              And the shuttle—the shuttle of his shut-in heart breeds the wind I glut in

                            The words gang in the gong of my thought of his thought, my hands fumble
                            towards, towards,—

My hands!—My hand branches on the wheel—
              glints like flies’ wings—blossoms on the wheel—
                            falls to the wheel—my hand climbs—crawls—skirts my hand to be—

to be my hand—to flick this reel—to be ringed
              In this, this amethyst, to be my My—but—could—him—
                            slowly him—who would touch—me touching, him touching—

His pharaoh’s walk in rippling flax displacing the Me always

              In all the elms and cockerels—to make a dog of, to poodle me

                            His wet breath’s lines, sugar my mouth takes, smelts, reels to drag me to his
                                          ropes and god

His crumpling temple chest will crumple forever and ever and ever and ever

                            His mouth, his lip’s word-to-life alchemy high and closed, rim to his
                                          Crownlands—of him, his thronging

                                          An exiling his breath—but my mother—his tongue and his mouth his

                                                        Avarice like avarice of the wet—I pour my neck loose my hair to
                                                        wash his bare—

                                                                                  bared—ankles but the—the, mother, his his

                                                                                                 gambroon and—

                                                                                                               the bathhouse smell of silted
                                                                                                               petticoats
                                                                                                                                 suet-warm
                                                                                                                   insides to out
                                                                                                               out—out in but—the wax my suet
                                                                                                               his his kiss—

—Gone, gone, all gone, gone, gone all of, the way of, laced of—gone. Gone.

              Scored for his bellows, strange, calico, strange, strangeness
                            a strangeness my mind, the mind but his lawless exclave
                                          I wander and wander around in—

              to pant, to drink, to swell, a midge in the frothed pool

                            with its daylong fiat of bread and, and being, to pant

(Kyrie, Kyrie!, down the windows, all through the deep deep street) to drink

              to fill, to swell in the pond of his hands to scatter
                            to beg to split to milk to soil to squeeze to push to shit

to beg to be to be battered among all his breaths to perish—

              a groan on the bridge a throb on the touch a smear on the calf

                            perish as the sobbing on a string sobbing

gone gone gone gone my peace gone
                            my heart gone, my peace gone
                                          my heart gone my peace gone—









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