The Stranger

I. Time and again he would return to that sleep,
but she draws him back with her body, with her whiteness,
with the confident health of her gestures as she dances.
Naked from the waist she dances, in the afternoon darkness,
in the round flickering room of the afternoon.

His arms about his knees, almost unborn,
he watches out of the darkness her flashing breasts;
then, like a sob, he rises, his arms before him;
he moves from shadow to shadow, toward the world’s dancing.

II. The woman is a darkness on which light plays.
Like the moon, like a swimmer at night, she moves through
an element of which she knows herself to be part.
Sweet wisdom; to his watching eyes the light
that darts along her limbs seems self-contained.

Having lost, until death, the natural knowledge of darkness,
adrift among flittering lights, without intending,
the stranger announces himself with a creaking oar.
The bodies flash and fade. Rocking, he sits;
behind his back in the trees the darkness giggles.