I would like to float on a tiny boat
As lonely as can be.
Between silvery stars, and silvery fish,
In the middle of a dark, cool sea.

I would like to lie down in a freshwater stream,
A reed-tangled, shadowy brook.
Like Ophelia in her watery tomb;
Where no one would think to look.

I would like to be found on some shingle beach,
Blasted dry by the desolate air.
My siren song has died in my throat,
And I've samphire in my hair.

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.

The red briny sea longs for the sky, the land
But she cannot touch either; she fizzes secretly with jealousy
That men may breathe the air and tread sod.
The sea has seen many things; tossed longboats, cloaked monsters,
Heard trojan song. She does not tell.
There is too much of her to count or chart,
At night she bathes the sun, and when morning comes
She hangs it out to dry.
By day she watches placidly, smooths treacherous rocks.
The sea smiles as she watches the fisherman at his table,
Through the little window that faces the bay,
Eating his stargazy pie.

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.

Let me sing to you my memories,
those pretty, faded, paper shapes.
How do you like the fire contained
in one dark and inward-turning eye,
Or the sugary fog of winter?
Borne in
on the broken wing of a collared dove,
a silvery sliver of northern air.
Do you hold my love in high regard,
as high as the strawberry moon that winks down on Trafalgar Square?
I think not.
I will snip the heads off those hot house roses of yours,
one
by
one.

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.

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.

Dwellers in a chalk and limestone country,
We never knew the well-watered valleys of Eden,
Whose Four Streams never ran dry,
The freshets and the fountains of that garden.

For long, it is said, we wandered in the desert
Where all the streams ran darkening into sand.
For survival, we ****** the damp grit
And in the dry storms held each other’s hand.

Faithful we may have been, yet had no faith
To smite the living granite with a staff.
We were not the kind for miracles.
It was enough sometimes to hear you laugh.

And now we have come to our own territory,
No Eden, but the pastureland is good.
The waters flow here unpredictably,
But here at least is neither sand nor flood.

And we, the fallen lovers, knowing thirst,
Learned long ago to play the waiting part,
And have most joy in knowing after cloudburst
The winterbournes and swallets of the heart.