Invocation at Dawn
Steal me away, you lovely secret.
Steal me as you’d steal a child from some dull dream – her nightgown
bunched and white in your delicious arms, blue
where fabric creases, blue where shadows fall. Spirit me
from all this idle chatter, from the low lamps.
All I see are rows of bottles and too many gaudy faces.
And the music is too much.
If you won’t gather me to you I’ll have to meet you in the street –
just dream my raw feet are as white and fleet
as some nymph’s, with her laurel-bound hair.
At this hour you must know I need your mercy.
At this hour you accept my throb and sorrow; you must know
that I am sick for forgetting you.
Why else do you veil me in the murmur of this blue?
Why do you lick the buildings pale new coats of pearl?
One note from a bird’s heart, two, three, they shimmer
vague and all silver, through the deep
dreams you breathe out for me.
Of course I don’t deserve them.
There is a light, there is a dome made of marble.
Here are my knees. Here is the growl of the pavement.
Your colors bleed into me – the cheap
threads of my dress, the unsavory swell of my flesh.
Have you swallowed the stars again?
I have a mouth, too; but it conceals
nothing. It is all quiet song, and all breath
that in your world ignite a blue slip of a flame –
a dazzling and vaporous iris.
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