The Bronze Lady
had her body
sharpened and hungry;
her gaze was undressed.
Cover it, Bronze Lady!
Protect it!
Her throat leaned slowly toward the Hudson.
Where are you going, Bronze Lady,
with your quick blue sky and the slow shepherd's staff?
What crystalline needle cuts you across
and awakens
your eyelids, the stars?
On the route,
the penetrating route where a ray
appears before the earthly days,
the Great Bronze Lady,
the mistress of morning time,
the resplendent lover detached
from serene harps and cloudy riverbeds,
called to a door
she believed was early,
a door of entry to transparent hours.
Night's door was opened,
and the shadow turned into living flesh at dawn.
It was made of cracked foam,
from the debris of an eye,
from a solitary temple and putrid height.
That door was an anguished tapestry
whereon each body fused its breath
with the closest throat.
Bronze Lady!
Servant of morning!
Take an inner step,
touch with your entrails
the rose of the wind!
Won't there be, in these verses,
the length of a lonely pupil?
Won't there be an echo, a sign
that would hide me?
And suddenly a sacred solitary race
passed by
(returning from the fire)
It was a man escorted by the fire
and dressed as space is dressed.
The lucent deer
sprang from his waist and his joy.
He spoke with his pure gaze
and a river
(a cup of dark garlands).
The man saw the breasts,
the eyes
of the Bronze Lady
and she
-banner of drunken gold,
victorious solitude of the afternoon-
took an inner step
(her step was a traveling rose,
a charred flower),
she marched over the living water,
over the river that will return tomorrow.
New York, October, 1961