to a rock - I must appear

a part of the landscape.

I see the monster's faceless head,

its neck a triumphant

arc of truth -

because in this world,

truth means pain.

It's the lie that blooms

into spray like silver smoke:

tell me it is only

a dolphin's smooth dive.

Tell me it's the moon,

bowing to my beauty.

Once when I was twelve I ran

into the banquet hall,

my hair a dark wind, on my hands

the pungent smell of juniper.

All the men leaned toward me.

I blushed and ran out.

Ran to my big cousin, and we raced

on wet sand, we climbed over

the slippery driftwood. I boasted

I was strong as any boy.

He said, "Want me to show you

how easy it would be to rape you?"

And he showed me.

The monster is slow as grief.

This is not hunger, this is ritual.

Why should it be much

to surrender this brief

shoreline of breath

with its clefts, its troublesome mouths -

The high priest in his plumage of death

said the monster too

is snared in the sea of Fate.

Forgive him, child.

    *

Is truth what we want?

Waiting for my death,

already I'm torn.

But past the gate of bone

I rise, I walk. Snow shines in the pass.

Mists open and close,

a meadow of clouds;

raindrops on pine needles

like small stars I slide

with the tip of my tongue, and drink.

I come upon water

as still as the sky,

step into a boat and lie down.

A sheet of light begins to unfold

over my feet, my thighs.

After it covers my eyes,

there is only light.

    *

The waves claw me,

the foam hisses and crawls.

My mother's praying for a miracle:

that a hero will

swoop down like a great bird, and then

I will be chained to him.

He will never see

that even if I am saved,

I have already died -

that smiling at him, I am far

away, not on this barren rock,

but all leafage, a valley

of infinite green -

where the moment of truth no longer

marbles into betrayal.

My face gives way to the clouds.

Space enters my outline.

In death there is no death;

]for the stars there is no night.

goddess or girl, we did not know

----Homer

I wear purple like a mystical sunset.

That's when the men arrive.

I was a failure in life.

Now with my herd of handsome swine,

everyone thinks me successful.

But it's too easy, loosening my hair,

letting the late light

play its game of glints

as I greet them, posing in a marble

alignment of shoulder and thigh.

Too practiced, serving them spiced wine,

singing my beautiful sad song.

Too familiar, that tremor

when they feel the tug

away from the need to be human.

The sun with its heart of fire

sets the sea on fire, then is gone.

In vain the waves spread their white veil

to make shine the black-pebbled shore.

queen of this doomed island.

I put my head in his lap

like a tired child - and he

held his breath

and closed his eyes.

No one has really

touched me since.

Over and over I roam

through an endless house.

I open doors and walk in,

a little scared and hushed,

as if entering new

chambers of the heart.

These are not guilty

labyrinths,

only unfinished solitudes.

I want to find

not the way out,

but the way deeper in.

    *

From room to room I follow

the rich gleaming among

tarnished icons -

no wonder it takes twenty years.

For love of legend I lie:

it takes longer than that

One's whole life.

The journey is endless.

I used to be someone waiting

at train stations swathed in smoky mist -

dissolving in the lamps' unearthly halos,

the rails glistening, beaded with metallic rain.

And I loved that veil of waiting,

that blurred world - the vanishing point

the impatient peered into, imagining

a faint, growing light at the end.

The erotics of railway stations!

So many shouts of recognition,

greetings, infinite departures -

warning whistles, embraces breaking off -

and underneath, the humid heart,

half-mist, half-drizzle,

that railroad weather always on the verge

of love and tears.

Now I stand rainless and trainless.

Memory, mother of the muses,

tell me this is luck: Danae in the desert,

I will not be swept away by a flood.

Unswept, unwept, in bright light,

let me borrow

for a moment, for a breath,

the bride's veil of fog."