The wintering started on a dark December eve; slowly and silently,
it numbed me through the window panes.

I dove off into the wine dark sea.
As cold as death, as cold as resignation.

The sickle moon smiled placidly down as I melted into sea foam.

Do you remember that night when
the pines thrashed their poor limbs
in the dark,
And the moon slipped away unnoticed
as though it was a ghosting?
Spun from spider's silk, it darted shyly behind the comforting skirt of a cloud:
that was the first dream.
And do you remember
how I tightroped along the silver trail of foam where the lake lapped at the cold rock, imagined myself
a creature native and indued unto that element?
I've heard that Nymphs bleed a certain colour-
When I slipped and fell
my blood was the royalest blue,
                             I swear it.

this is the last golden moon that I will see, I should think
the only and the last           so I tiptoe down to Jericho

and watch them wash the artichoke hearts in brine

(I wonder if I could cure my own heart in that fashion)

and the man in the cloth cap gives me a coffee from the machine


I walk back in the weak light of that shadow hour,
When all is still and the doves are cooing in their nests
the moon winks down on me. Don't do it, sister


I am the only and the last    she says           for there is no moonlight in the sepulchre


and in my blue silk shawl, my pale veined hands            that moonstone ring like a fossilised tear

I can't leave myself yet. My mother

in her bed, sleeping soundly, and the river glittering through the bullrushes

this is not my only day, nor my last.

As I walk into the night,
as white as a milk cat,
as pure as a cauldron of snow,
I walk blindly.
Not knowing my own potentia.
But when they see me, spotless vellum, unpierced velum, a lamb,
They whisper snatches of carnal knowledge in my ear.
They make me Eve and Pandora,
But I am Ophelia,
and I am Proserpine:
I wear her pomegranate in my hair.

A smile fell in the grass.
Irretrievable!

And how will your night dances
Lose themselves. In mathematics?

Such pure leaps and spirals ----
Surely they travel

The world forever, I shall not entirely
Sit emptied of beauties, the gift

Of your small breath, the drenched grass
Smell of your sleeps, lilies, lilies.

Their flesh bears no relation.
Cold folds of ego, the calla,

And the tiger, embellishing itself ----
Spots, and a spread of hot petals.

The comets
Have such a space to cross,

Such coldness, forgetfulness.
So your gestures flake off ----

Warm and human, then their pink light
Bleeding and peeling

Through the black amnesias of heaven.
Why am I given

These lamps, these planets
Falling like blessings, like flakes

Six sided, white
On my eyes, my lips, my hair

Touching and melting.
Nowhere.

Here are two pupils
whose moons of black
transform to cripples
all who look:

each lovely lady
who peers inside
take on the body
of a toad.

Within these mirrors
the world inverts:
the fond admirer's
burning darts

turn back to injure
the thrusting hand
and inflame to danger
the scarlet wound.

I sought my image
in the scorching glass,
for what fire could damage
a witch's face?

So I stared in that furnace
where beauties char
but found radiant Venus
reflected there.

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky ----
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection
At the end, they soberly **** out their names.

The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness ----
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars
Inside the church, the saints will all be blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness -- blackness and silence