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.