With a chaste heart,

with pure eyes,

I declare your beauty

holding the leash of blood

so that it might leap out

and trace your outline

where

you lie down in my ode

as in a land of forests, or in surf:

in aromatic loam

or in sea-music.

Beautiful nude:

equally beautiful

your feet

arched by primeval tap

of wind or sound;

your ears

small shells

of the splendid American sea;

your breasts

a level plenitude ful-

filled by living light;

your flying

eyelids of wheat

revealing

or enclosing

the two deep countries of your eyes.

The line your shoulders

have divided

into pale regions

loses itself and blends

into the compact halves

of an apple,

continues separating

your beauty down

into two columns

of burnished gold, fine alabaster,

to sink into the two grapes of your feet,

where your twin symmetrical tree

burns again and rises:

flowering fire, open chandelier,

a swelling fruit

over the pact of sea and earth.

From what materials—

agate, quartz, wheat—

did your body come together,

swelling like baking bread

to signal silvered

hills,

the cleavage of one petal,

sweet fruits of a deep velvet,

until alone remained,

astonished,

the fine and firm feminine form?

It is not only light that falls

over the world,

spreading inside your body

its suffocated snow,

so much as clarity

taking its leave of you

as if you were

on fire within.

The moon lives in the lining of your skin.