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.

Forget the fall! Just tell me how you flew
before the air around you pivoted
right-angle with the sea, and plummeted
by skywards, when you traded blue for blue.

Forget the melting-candle smell before,
and don't tell me you were afraid -- you bore
me when you do. Keep on this way, I'll go --
unless you'll tell me how it was to know

the sky as intimately as the earth
knows rain. You're flotsam now, and wash ashore
in floating feathers, nibbled bones -- it's worth
it for the myth and gorgeous metaphor.

Indifferent poets picked your ribs like eels --
you never said how flight or falling feels.

Listen, lover, when you asked, I told
you, "Bring me wild roses" -- well, I meant
it like the princess who, unloving, sent
her swain to find a star. Since it is cold

December and no wild roses are
alive -- but you come back, your hands and arms

in tatters, like the fragrant feral things
Resisted you, as I have, with their claws.
What kind of idiot would think to bring
me what I asked for, when no binding clause

can hold me to the promises I made?
Did you collect me stories with those blooms?
You're spattered with their barbarous perfume --
but tell me all you saw, and I'll be swayed.

The origin of "chrysalis" is "gold" --
so etymology is beautiful,
and entomology, as well, unfolds
exquisite wings. Creation's bountiful

in connotations, natural poetry
and little jokes we find like Easter eggs
in ordinary speech. Bathymetry
of language or the living cosmos begs

Attention, but, distracted, we ignore
Incalculable depths so we can speak.
There are no simple words. They're only more
or less compact. Just think what we could wreak --

A "nymph," from "veiled" and "bud" and "bride"
is only insubstantial from outside.