I HER EYES Her eyes hold black whips -- dart of a whip lashing, nay, flicking, nay, merely caressing the hide of a heart -- and a broncho tears through canyons -- walls reverberating, sluggish streams shaken to rapids and torrents, storm destroying silence and solitude! Her eyes throw black lariats -- one for his head, one for his heels -- and the beast lies vanquished -- walls still, streams still, except for a tarn, or is it a pool, or is it a whirlpool twitching with memory? II HER HAIR Her hair is a tent held down by two pegs -- ears, very likely -- where two gypsies -- lips, dull folk call them -- read your soul away: one promising something, the other stealing it. If the pegs would let go -- why is it they're hidden? -- and the tent blow away -- drop away -- like a wig --or a nest -- maybe you'd escape paying coin to gypsies -- maybe -- III HER HANDS Blue veins of morning glories -- blue veins of clouds -- blue veins bring deep-toned silence after a storm. White horns of morning glories -- white flutes of clouds -- sextets hold silence fast, cup it for aye. Could I blow morning glories -- could I lip clouds -- I'd sound the silence her hands bring to me. Had I the yester sun -- had I the morrow's -- brush them like cymbals, I'd then sound the noise. IV HER BODY Her body gleams like an altar candle -- white in the dark -- and modulates to voluptuous bronze -- bronze of a sea -- under the flame. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...WOMAN, GALLUP, N.M. by KAREN SWENSON THE LOVE OF CHRIST WHICH PASSETH KNOWLEDGE by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI POLITICAL GREATNESS by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY WRITTEN AT AN INN AT HENLEY by WILLIAM SHENSTONE |