Sea
Sea
Original Text
Apostrophes IV: Speaking You is Holiness. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2000: 21.
1When I woke, it was not skin I felt upon my body. Night
2had fallen over me, I wore the dark. Now the moon might rise
3within me. None would see it, but its rising would become the shape
4my body has. You lay beside me sleeping, the one sound your breath.
5If we are anywhere, this is our geography, an air
6that is the score of our flesh, an annotation spelling us.
7I do not think that it was you beside me --: it seemed to me a sound
8that was arising from a sea, and I invisible was lying
9in the dark beside it, the sea exhaling waves. If the gods
10were anymore, they would not stoop to speech, but we, when they were in
11their ecstasies, would leap into the air, spilling over from
12their mouths, sufficient words for them to name an order of the world.
13So you would become the sea, a sea of sacred utterance,
14and I the hearing of the sea, its answer to the moon in me.
Publication Start Year
2000
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2006
Form
Special Copyright
© 2000 <i>Apostrophes IV: Speaking You is Holiness</i> University of Alberta Press