Says here is a girl who gets written like palms,
says here is a girl who moves paint like Tahiti.
Teeth infinite white and infinite many and with
them she infinite eat me, and mouth full of invert
and cane and coarse sugar, and her dresses all
came from across
the water, and they rode a light chop
on the sea in fast ships, and she owns twenty
pairs of the shape of her hands, and slashed silk
on her shoulder like claws of a parrot, and here
the love poem delights:
the word “parrot” will never
be replaced, and will continue meaning always
exactly what it means, as none of the words
in this sentence have done—come read me again
in a hundred years and see how I keep my shape!
Love poem back to your subject, the word “parrot”
is not the right woman for you, hard to hold
and too much red; love poem, think long arms
and flies nowhere.
I remember her now, it says, and says she is far
from me, says hear how her voice is a Western
slope, when west meant the sun it rose and set
there, and monstrous the shadows of flowers all
down it, in the days before voice meant something
you wrote with. Love poem as we used to write it
says her small brown paw is adorable, which is
to say brown as we used to use it, which is to say
just sunburned,
just monstrous the shadows of flowers all on it,
which is to say paw as we used to use it, which is
to say a human hand, and human as we used
to use it, which is to say almost no one among us.
Blond of course and blond. Blond as a coil of rope,
and someone hauled on her somewhere, and loop
after loop flew out of her helpless. The someone
was out at sea, and language on my shoulder like
claws of a parrot. I sailed the world over
to deliver one letter, one letter of even one letter,
one word, and one word as we used to use it:
in those days she was the only Lady, in those days
she wrote a small round hand,
and I hauled on it saw it fly loop by loop out of her.
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