white myrtle-flesh

To love this flesh,
its rivers and valleys,
its fruits,
ripe or rotting…

To finger the pricks of a bush,
lick the blood of the world
with a warm tongue,
and comprehend a crow’s hunger…

To endure
without any sense of time—
to wake, sleep, live and die
under the same sun, moon and stars,
eternal as a weed.

Once I wounded him with so
small a thorn
I never thought his flesh would burn

or that the heat within would grow
until he stood
incandescent as a god;

now there is nowhere I can go
to hide from him:
moon and sun reflect his flame.

the Gorgon’s living flesh

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is.

Centre of all centres, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed and growing sweet—
all this universe, to the furthest stars
and beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.

the word made flesh