I think of you, o Judith, as I lie awake.
I will not be a cold Lucretia, nor a saint,
her tongue cut out: I will not wrench my ecstasy
from silence or self-sacrifice. Why should I be
like anyone but gray-eyed Judith, who perfumed
herself with spice and sandalwood, and then bitumed
the sheets with monster's blood? You carried home his head
as though it were a cabbage or a loaf of bread
bought in the marketplace. I only hope the sweat
that ran into your stinging eyes did not prevent
your satisfying anger when you saw those hands,
like drunken crabs that scrambled at your skirt, release.
If woman's vengeance must be tenderer than man's --
at least, then, Sister, we're exacting to appease.

There's nothing irreducibly complex:
a driven randomness details
the corkscrew of flagellar tails
and parasites impel us to have sex.

So grind flagella into dust: you'll find
old Yersinia's spare needle;
when she isn't plaguing people
she blindly tinkers, as do all our kind.

We living things are ad hoc engineers:
the human eye sees upside down;
the brain must flip the world around.
The skies are not fixed Matryoshka spheres.

I tend to mince my words, and exercise
strict posture when I eat: my arms and eyes
ahead, my feet laid flat, and back fixed straight,
I pepper every phrase before I taste.
But I should shave my head, be vulture-bald
and impolite, extract the offal all
the lionesses and prim epicures
disdain, and tear intestines and get fur
stuck in my teeth. The best are redolent
of bloat with microbes and with metaphors --
the choicest, juiciest of words ferment;
putrescent dainties please detritivores.
Or else a fungus, with tremendous roots,
and rotting earth will birth unlovely fruits.

How strange! The heavens stopped like freight trains stop,
those sobbing, grinding planetary wheels
-- that metal sound that makes the marrow drop
down to the bottom of one's bones. I reel
at first; you kiss as though you're never sad,
and there I was, my feet and eyes on stones
so old they move arthritically, their bones
begrimed with soot -- and you, an oread,
sun-crowned! My daydreams love to torture me
like boys who pull the wings off flies, to see
their hopelessness -- and so I walked, when you
dreamed up yourself, and dropped white asters through
your fingers, so they fell like stars; their scent
trailed after them like light in their descent.