The Most Extraordinary Women in the World

Di Cicco, Pier Giorgio (1949 - 0)

Original Text

Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, Living in Paradise: New and Selected Poems (Toronto: Manfield Press, 2001): 93.

1These are the most extraordinary women in the world,

2they do not go to bed at 11 p.m.

3when they dance, they dance with you,

4when they sing, it is the motherhood of half the world,

5when they go walking, they have an affair with sunlight;

6these are the women who hold men's faces in the palm of

7their hands, these are the women men go back to, because

8they do not come easy and they do not come hard. These women

9are poetry. They arrange for their sons and daughters the

10minute they see the sun, because the sun is a beautiful thing

11to sit under. To love the air is to want to fill it with lovers.

12These women do not understand words like

13would, likely, depending --

14those are english words

15that have no place in the mouths of people,

16those are words made up for the language of thought,

17that have forgotten to serve the language of lovers.

18Those words are in a manual at the bottom of the ocean,

19where strange fish gnaw upon them,

20uncomprehending fish that mouth the strange words

21like relationship, perhaps, except, attachment.

22The most extraordinary women in the world,

23above, are sunning on beaches; when they sigh,

24trees far off are heard breathing in

25the loveliest towns in the world.

Publication Start Year

1986

Publication Notes

Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, Virgin Science: Hunting Holistic Paradigms (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1986): 11.

RPO poem Editors

Ian Lancashire

RPO Edition

2003

Rhyme