Aphrodite as I know Her
It is not ruin but the tenderness
I love. Not what time destroys
but what remains: the empty
hands broken off at the wrists.
How can I tell you what I know
of Aphrodite, how I found her
weeping at the gates of the city
or kneeling by the river at night,
without diminishing her love for me?
Who is now inside me singing.
Who continues to efface herself
in spite of me. Destroy her
temple and who will raise me up?
Not the sibyls dragging away
the broken columns, the tokens
of that life they most desired.
Awaiting Translation
My habit is reading only beginnings
of books in a stranger’s tongue, or else
waiting for a new translation, the meaning
of lines still imprisoned on the shelf.
To set myself free! So often I have missed
the chance to dive into an ocean
of imported words (not that I’d resist
the drowning), yet I’ve felt the motion
of the wind-tossed water slowly taking me
farther and farther out in its tides . . .
If only I could balance that cardboard sea
on the crown of my head, I would try
dousing it with fire, that hard-cover cross
(no heavier than a human heart).
The ink and paper would save me, not because
words can save any more than the Ark
or the City of Enoch (all saved in the Bible)
but because words must come to an end.
Did Columbus know there’d be an end to all
his travels—did he expect to find
a new world? Picture him washed up on a shelf
of sand, blazing forth again! I wish
I could be like him and somehow keep myself
alive, leave the last word unfinished.
