Whispered

Kathryn Dettmer

A thin stalk is your body
from which grain fell without sprouting
how like a thin stalk is your body

A skein of silk is your body
desire written on the tissues’s 
every last wrinkling
how like a skein of silk is your body

A burning sky is your body
furtively, a banshee with it, 
in the weaving
how like a burning sky is your body

The quiet is your body
its cry sets my eyelids trembling
how like the quiet is your body

Certitude

I enter into love and while blinded
feel my way, stumbling into the dark past
of your stricken mercies

I ransack and, unexpectedly and already, I know
it is not a given for me to stay in this paradise
I have so longed and yet do not belong

I pass though I renounce nothing
while staring into your noble eyes
there, I steal into half death half shadow