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William Dickey, body, in English Clear filters

SadWilliam Dickey

Of Proportion

It is the kingdom of proportion, That being hunchback born I cannot enter. It is there that the fearless symmetries are danced. And it is news of propositions Concerning spheres and other equal bodies, That they, for their prosperity, act and publish. But I was marred in the firing, hurt in finish, The eye judging me neither simple nor whole, The hand afflicted by the eyesight's tremor, And though I call music into my partial soul, The strings slack at the hesitant invitation, The horns silence on the penultimate note, And those simple doors of perfect, unclouded crystal Combine to be closed to my attempts to enter, Return no echo from those who have gone beyond
AnxiousWilliam Dickey

Mythological Figures

Whether prodigious as the cold giant crying at the earth's nether end, or designed to amaze, with snakes fluidly curling at the cheekbone's edge, or with goat feet given to the continuous lust, the demoniac erection, all of them like scars lacing the smooth flesh of our common body, or like an eye grown with long disease shut to the whole vision, burn in a blunt light
CheerfulWilliam Dickey

Narcissus Unbound

Wholly from idiosyncratic reasons, my feet Seem to me handsome, the arrangement of toes What an arranger of toes would, at his best, have meant. And the legs that work up from them; even on moody days I can see that the deployment of blond hair is right, And the knee-caps, splendidly defined, not open to argument. No one should praise his begetting apparatus, and I won't, Except to say: if a responsible mechanism Was wanted to keep things going, this is it. And shoulders and chest; I cannot say enough To tell how I admire my various body; Growth of beard, growth of tooth; there is no end of it. And I could stand by the live mirror forever Praising my nakedness and distinguished parts,
SadWilliam Dickey

Someplace Away

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,
ContemplativeWilliam Dickey

Resolving Doubts

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

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