Sleeping in a Field, and: For Every Shadow

Sleeping in a Field

in a dream moths thud into my body            taking me for light

+the way to the water:   a one-eared yellow cat,      beach roses, swans like bones in the air.

then it was only the hanging moss of your damp hair,the sea's painting of hysteria behind you.

no one asking who will bring us water.   no one stopping the soft prayer of your hands         breaking up bread, oranges.

we did not speak of her, though we saw faces of girlsin dusk-blushed rocks.

only later, in a letter, did we say. Writing becomes memory.

the wine bottle fellto form a bazaar of lanterns. What could we say?

the sea wind eats our words, the way particles of lightbegin to fall into night's mouth.

it didn't mean absence of thought. Someone touchingher long, unwashed hair. Like coarse wheat.

it was only something hushed in our village.a girl fell asleep in a field and then it was blood

brushed on wheat, the sound of tractors humming,the white feathers of sunlight falling, and falling.

For Every Shadow

You taught me to love women, women who were prostitutesto the German occupiers and whose heads were shaved,

who sold brown soap, wore clogs, women in legends,Medusa, Valkyries, women who bled making lace—

We loved them, and I love you in a room which Chopinfills with rain, where your curls coil like ferns,

and I tell you how, as a child, my feet were marredby wooden shoes. Each body wore stories

like unwanted uniforms, soldiers sowing onthe Soviet emblem at night, blistered fingers spelling:

Kõigi maade proletaarlased, ühinege!Proletarians of the world, unite.

I loved the women with furrowed handswho carried bread to the store in bicycle baskets,

mothers who fried potato peels, women who spat.

(Dusk)

We go to a cemetery, find tables by the graves,shot glasses in weeds:

a Slavic manner to drink with the dead.I do not believe oppression thins like morning mist.

The memory of it alters into a habit, like the women I lovewho still slip their hair into florid scarves,

who serve tea for ghosts,whose furrowed hands braid our hair with light.