Poem Without Bodies
I want to make the body into sky.
– Anish Kapoor, on his sculpture Marsyas (2002), Turbine Hall, Tate Modern
No, I can’t imagine it–– I, the taut tongue in an unsheltered
mouth dizzy with the earth as it turns
and turns. At least let me be skin. Something beneath skin.
What is direction in a fabric which shivers everywhere?
O heaven flayed hoarse until the red edge
of your tender,
am I most seen when I escape sight?
It is possible nowhere
to view the whole sky. To flee blood’s plump, smooth brawl
and still contain. Endless sprint of shadows
never still, show me what it is to strip and churn
into silence. To stun. To be enormous
and mortal at once.
I have prayed and prayed that love was only fear
hung out in a bright field to dry. What else would the wind in me leave
to offer up for conversion? O furious everything,
what’s the use of becoming the world
if you cannot see the world. Tell me
what it is to be cradled by nothing at all.
