I love you, my wife, you are
beside me sleeping,
though earlier
you were warmly
within my hand,
your hand;

And I looked and I saw
you sitting there,
the light easily
within your eyes,
and all blueness peered
palely out;

What is more beautiful than you—
I do not know.

No more goodness that I know either.

(you are goodness ten times
the goodness that is me)

And kindness.

And I am always near to your thoughts.
And no one has ever loved me, as do you.

I love you, and I love you, and I love you.

You are my wife.
Always that I am.
And will be.

(i leaned over and kissed your cheek.
you were sleeping while, and were irritated—i could tell)

It is still here now, I think.
Perhaps.

The land is still.
The grass is still.
The water is still.

(the rain faintly against the glass is still.).



The earth is private in the smallness of its breathing.

It is the smallness of my son’s breathing.

I stand over him and I listen and I watch.

He breathes and the smallness of the world sleeps with him.


(my wife snores.
my daughter rustles in her crib.)


It is still here now, I think, perhaps.

cool this
finger over
scalp(

             the world)

and beneath
the hair the
slick stuff
of love:


F L O W E R S  .    

Where
between
the quick cloth
of trees a stag

(twining tine)

‘tween root and sea

. And the taste of everything

perhaps is
the last
breath of (almost) Spring

when neck and kissing
each smoothness of skin arrives.

Opening all doors—
fills all hallways:

the laughing of children
and the whispers of mothers

i need but one word to speak
before all entreaty close me:
the sighs of women weak
and all the ladies holy.

my wife that i love you are sleeping
heat over heat
of my ankle yours ;

the trilling
thrum of
your snore is long

longer than the long night
of unsleepingly my body,

heat under heat

of your body mine.  .  .

i hear occasionally our son
also whose snoring
is small
small
sma
ll er

than he is
(can you believe?)

that you are
after all
who i wish i had become,

       (i do not know you)  .

the lips neither the mouth nor
teeth between neck.

i kiss,
and again
i am not you.

i make after the rain
my skin to run
with rivulets of sun.

i do not live early
or sweet between you.

i do not make the small sound
of your breath
inside my own breath.

but, after all, i have my son.

and what more is there than that?

nothing.

and perhaps
(after all)
he shall be
who i wish i had become.

my wife,

you are my flesh,
within your flesh:


            (my son)

who sleeps within you.

i love you that you are me,
and i am you;
inside your body
which sleeps beside me.