Nude Descending

Like a bowerbird trailing a beakful of weeds Like prize ribbons for the very best The lover, producer Of another’s pleasure He whom her swollen lips await Might wing through any day of the decade A form of health insurance For which it is never too late Titanic, silver brush Hindenburg, of exploding cigars a climax The watery below, the fiery above Ashes of print between—pigment between If the crippled woman were to descend From her bed, her fortress beyond midnight Downstairs (nude/staircase) to the kitchen Naked to sit at the table (writing/thinking) She might hear the washer spin like a full orchestra Complete a cycle like a train crash Before the fiend would stare through the window Step smoothly into the kitchen, stop some clocks. Envy shapes a fig tree in one’s breast, That is, bluntly to say, a cancer, That is to say In a mind, a fertile windy field. A murdered child. Well then, fear, primarily of falling. Ebony surf toils on the beach, a glaze At the same moment I am (from a cliff) falling The kitchen fiend removes his Dior tie Places his hand over the woman’s And softly says: I am the lover. Now if the crippled woman began to dance To pirouette, to rumba Growling for her child Her burning page, the devil would be shamed (Materialism is not for everyone / Religion is The extension of politics by other means