VI

(section three)

 

                                        Now I come to this
with her beside me, shining salt on her thighs,
crushed wet leaf between them, I come to this
with her: old, she will open like a book, dry or soft,
each fold a warm papery fug of ink; old, I will rest
my face like this, an ear pressed to her rib, listening.
For she is finer to me than a thousand thousand clocks,
more striking than sickled cuffs, this letter I write
is a sack unfilled, these lines without her air,
golden burlap, aridity. In August the streets rain,
she is the exact shade of a bruise or winter plum;
all autumn she is white as peeled bark; brilliant grains
of sand tack the boardwalk at her feet, a small sifting
of the earth. I come to this with her: I have loved
warmth, blackness, husks of sex, golden Beatrice,
Beatrice my Budapest.

 

From Anatomy of Keys by Steven Price. Copyright © 2006 by Steven Price. Reprinted by permission of Steven Price and Brick Books.