Beauty and the Beast

That the transactions would end

That the rose would make open (her appearance in a Cyrillic blouse),

leaving the sense

that single had reached for it -

dust gray amethystine green manifold red and torn, his studied performance of a romantic mood

He is still eating other small beasts.

She is sleeping alone

coiffed in the pleated moments

only rising to bathe before the mirror

with its grand with equal reason what.

But we who have held the work with both hands

and suffer the syntax shape us

we are not evermore

as mirror or sleep

In our novel cloven space

events dissolve to the sexual instant,

each of us holding the hairy hand

with thrilling lucidity.

so we at no time find what we mean

but if flakes not upon on our hands,

so the pleasures we greatest in quantity desire

go unexpressed,

people of the time to come will also have

light, fragile conversation

and a hidden cottage with shutter carved,

where each summer we return

with no misgivings, no spectacle -

Nothing to be afraid of

Only the 16th hundred air,

making it impossible to breathe more purely

And she is femaling him

And he is maling her.

And someone says, the end

And someone says,

no, this is my body

Copyright World poesy Incorporated Jan/Feb 1997

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