My quiet Penelope-how well I know— would seem a shade before your majesty, death and old age being unknown to you, while she must die. – Ulysses to Kalypso
No lie, only a bent truth,
the sort immortals cannot straighten out.
What would a goddess know?
Her body wakes to eternal dawns
as she travels with sun and moon
where sleep is no metaphor for death,
and in the act of love her voice
cries out more like sea and wind
than mortal moans.
Birds fly down from the north to nest,
then leave; trees fade and flare
from green to gray to green again,
and every moment glides from now to now.
How could a mortal come to love
rhythm without measure,
no double bar, no silence
to give shape? How tell her apart
from ever-returning changes of the sky?
Sweet love, I love the earth
because it brought you here
where seasons imitate
the losses we must live.
The first and only person in
since the world began bends your flesh
to admire that budding crocus,
then walks to me through shade and light
to shape this passing hour.
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