verse 5 (fr. Sweetheart, over____)

However the body is described
And however the body is inscribed

I go down deeper
I go down below the road
Where the body takes its root

I take hold of the path
That is indivisible
And it’s time

Below the road
Deeper than the traffic
Below the peace
In the country I’m composed of

The poverty of the sea
The columns of broken hills
And the shattered escarpments

The mound of pillaged hills
And the chopped land
The excess of the sky

Whose grasping light
Reaches out
Far out beyond
The weeping land

And brings back
Handfuls of smoke
Mouthfuls of salt air
Dressing and stripping

With cloud and salt
The mourning field

However it is that I’m composed
Ugly and beautiful-ugly
Sad and dutifully alive

The same as you
According to a metaphor
Whose structure will never be found
In poetry

Eyes in the skin
With resentment in their eye-holes
Searching

For the words
For the tongue
In your tattooed faces

Your skins of lead
Your leaves of organs
Layering thickly
The dark bush

The skins of your cells
Your chemistry
Looking for your microscopic difference

But chiefly for the stories of belonging
To a path
Below the skin

Whose outside order is overcome
Who is both female and male
Human and subhuman