William Dickey

SHE If to demands of others I agree, Then I will be another, but not me.

HE If their requiring voices shake your ear, How will your very spirit help but hear?

SHE It will, a bird, desert its builded nest, And in the virgin cloudbank only rest.

HE If they have wings like other birds of prey, How will it from those raptors keep away?

SHE It will seek out the ocean's whitest curl, And sink within it, and become a pearl.

HE But when they dive as glittering fishers dive, Will they not take your luster all alive?

SHE Venue shall make no difference to disguise, Nor shall my center open to their eyes.

HE But if by chance, by force, by God knows how, You all unguarded should some night allow Another there beside you in your bed, Body is body, and cannot lie dead.

SHE Body is body, but the heart stays true, And should that happen, I will think him you.

The celebrations of her night began. She was as indolent as the fallen silk Nightdress that spumed upon the still divan.

She was the promise of the lesser flame Before the candle blossoms and grows quick, She was the relaxation of the foam

At quiet water, when the tide hangs pent, Poised for its full swell to the anxious shore. She was enchaining her own element

Until the music of the night might swim Upon her wholly like a pool of milk, Cool, animal. Until she in her dim

Half-motion through the sibilant half-dark Might cling, as to the hand a strip of silk Full-charged, might cling, waiting its sudden spark.

Brown from the sun's mid-afternoon caress, And where not brown, white as a bridal dress, And where not white, pink as an opened plum.

And where not pink, darkly mysterious, And when observed, openly furious, And then obscured, while the red blushes come.

And then she put her hand lightly alongside The nape of my neck, where the hair needed cutting. "You are a true light in my wilderness," She said, and, "I am grieved at our not meeting When we were young." I heard the hall door shutting Where an earlier me had risen and hurried to dress, Left money, spoken short, and was retreating Into the well-kept monkery of its pride.

She soothed my hair, saying, but this wants cutting. My hair was tired, as tired as my narrow body, Thin with the exercise of staying itself. I let my lips smile, I let my thin flanks study The ease of the bed, how the yellow room was ready Amply and insistently to give itself, How she smiled in it, her smile as yet unsteady, And listened for the noise of my heart beating.

Someplace, in an instant fury of knowing itself my body, That earlier body flicked its brown hand at her, Reached for the door, and with the door, the world. My breath rose like an arrogant language coiled Toward my throat, to say my unmingled nature. Her hand, a shuttle in a pattern, curled Through the mixed light and shadow, scribed and sealed Documents of softness on my answering body.

So I received her hand, and I smiled at her, More comfortable, my lips fuller than before, Ready to spend my last cent at being where, Naked and warm, I could be shut of talking, Talking, telling my name, the things I was good for, What I could do, myself, what strong affair Was measured by the distance of my walking. These I would tell her, if I wanted, later.

Later. But now my body lay before Her body, that confrontation strictly cutting The edge of sight, till we looked straight ahead Into that time only of a mirrored waiting By shorter moments toward our joint begetting. Then, when we lay more easily on the bed, Then, when we faced each other, whitely sitting, Then later, I was not a person anymore.

But part of me said, your hair is in need of cutting. I stroked myself with her hand alongside What had been my body, and felt the room approve me, The world that I wanted decorously applaud, All smiles, the weather of this latitude. I felt the sun, the wind, the soft rain love me, And did not hear, my heart sounded so loud, Someplace away, the noise the door made shutting.

The blond cowl terse as a blunt threat to injure, The claws instinctive to a triggering nerve, I am a shut spring in my fanged disguises, Aping the beast I serve.

I would be for you an offering of clear spirit, Like water glistening over your spread hands, Like the pattern described in air when the bird has left it, Like not yet peopled lands.

Tick-laden fur ruffling for winds of danger, I gorge on honey in the fallen tree, Snarl at approachers to these laden acres That bind their fruit to me.

I would be for you like a length of fallow From the earliest world, like open mountainside Too high for the spurred seed to beat and follow, For the edged wing to glide.

Puzzled, the shared beast lurks under my eyelids, Dumb, menacing, not able to let go, Or to conceive that who comes unconstrainéd Stays the most easily so.

I would be for you as a willing mirror, Plain crystal, undefined, of itself dumb, That shapes its voice when you first look into it, Smiling, "Now you have come."

The boat is ready in which I must embark. Farewell then mother and father. Home, farewell. There will be letters brought by a talking stork To say that my adventures are going well.

Farewell then cat and dog and the kitchen chair. I see you frozen into a photograph At which, while the Queen of Fairyland smooths my hair, I may with a contemptuous fondness laugh.

For you are so small you might as well be dolls, And I am so fiercely burning like a star That even your petulant ocean meekly lulls, And will like a taxi hurry me anywhere.

Farewell then old indigenous comfy laps And nurse and nurture. I am bound away To walk the diamond mountain's icy steps And shake the golden pillars of the day.

Then, when I hold the world like a giant key, And have no further sky nor sea to burn, To gratify your natural pride in me, Briefly, unwillingly, I may return.

I'll not go hunting In that kind of wood, Where the beasts are all but human, And the water not good;

For they look at your arrow With ambiguous eyes, The sooner to make their sorrow In your own heart rise,

Rise like the black water Of their tainted springs, That deadens the spurt of laughter With imaginings.

If any ask me follow To a wood of that kind, I'll call him bravery's fellow And stay behind

To shoot my own acre Where the beasts are thin, But there's never an eye's flicker That calls me kin,

To listen to the light patter Of my sole spring, That gives only water, plain water, Not some other thing.

Increment, gain, increase— My belly grows in peace Fatter than Buddhas or The heaviest emperor.

Increment of the self: No Ghibelline or Guelph Felt his self more intact Than I, or more perfect.

Gain of the weighty word: Ponderous and absurd Analogies from Greece Fatten my speech apace

And struggle to increase. I struggle, in my grease, Half man and half cold fat, To wear my weightiest hat,

To gain, and hold my gains: My egg and gravy stains, Like jewels in my crown My academic gown,

My hair that duly parts, My six reptilian hearts, My simple murderer's hands On which the live fat stands,

And, by itself, my head, Sluggish and amply fed, Which thinks with glee of that Ever-amassing fat.

Substance and self-respect. I am of that good sect Of which the Khan is weighed In diamonds, then betrayed,

And if I talk to you Slowly, my voice like glue, Shaking, my hands like tongues, Breathing from heavy lungs,

You may know I would have Your substance to my grave, And would acquire your weight To my edifice of hate

That is the only good. Copper, nor brick, nor wood Lie on my endless paunch Like everlasting lunch,

But let them write for me "He is as he would be, Weighty," and set it down In fat, substantial stone.

Increment, gain, increase— What have we got but these? What we have got we know. My belly tells me so.