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delgaOf Penelope and Calypso,
ca. 1973
by Sherre Vernon
I
With driftwood, the sea
touches her, pale and only
for the lean blue nights.
Penny downs
her Odyssey and sleeps
against the crook
of his arm, unfired clay.
He has withheld since
returning: this translation
is hard on the eyes, and English
a language of stone.
It is no unfamiliar thing
this leaving, this foregoing
the smell of rice paper,
by a woman’s hands traced
and hidden;
in deep accident,
by woman’s hands
found.
II
He knows one question
will unlock the years,
rust her bitter chastity,
unfork his tongue:
he will tell how he spilt her
name into the sandy stars
and intoned her face
through chalk-charred
northern cliffs,
how only unseen delay
kept him breast-pillowed
in a stranger’s cove.
He will say, no, I never
loved her so well as you
who weaved and unwove
everyman's reach,
you who watched the sky,
the shivered horizon, for some
scar of my return.
III.
From shoulder glancing,
and the search for wild
yarrow trenches,
her tiny hand cuffs
where long hair fell –
to Ha Long Bay, a woman
bosomed and bare
washes away the last
of green face-oil, coarse
western cotton
between her thighs, long
cloth rolled to show –
dispossessed, an ankle,
in this burned thatch
where a man might –
were he not bound
by one lock of wind, forget
her unanswered covenant,
the why he left, and the way
he shoaled his Calypso.
ca. 1973
by Sherre Vernon
I
With driftwood, the sea
touches her, pale and only
for the lean blue nights.
Penny downs
her Odyssey and sleeps
against the crook
of his arm, unfired clay.
He has withheld since
returning: this translation
is hard on the eyes, and English
a language of stone.
It is no unfamiliar thing
this leaving, this foregoing
the smell of rice paper,
by a woman’s hands traced
and hidden;
in deep accident,
by woman’s hands
found.
II
He knows one question
will unlock the years,
rust her bitter chastity,
unfork his tongue:
he will tell how he spilt her
name into the sandy stars
and intoned her face
through chalk-charred
northern cliffs,
how only unseen delay
kept him breast-pillowed
in a stranger’s cove.
He will say, no, I never
loved her so well as you
who weaved and unwove
everyman's reach,
you who watched the sky,
the shivered horizon, for some
scar of my return.
III.
From shoulder glancing,
and the search for wild
yarrow trenches,
her tiny hand cuffs
where long hair fell –
to Ha Long Bay, a woman
bosomed and bare
washes away the last
of green face-oil, coarse
western cotton
between her thighs, long
cloth rolled to show –
dispossessed, an ankle,
in this burned thatch
where a man might –
were he not bound
by one lock of wind, forget
her unanswered covenant,
the why he left, and the way
he shoaled his Calypso.
--
Have you heard Metric's The Twist? So haunting and sexy. I bet you could do fantastic pointe work to it.
