The Fish

I think my heart

has never been

         like this

                  so warm and red.

I feel

even in the worst moments of this fatal night

several thousand sun-springs

                                                   in my heart

surge up from deep certainty.

I feel

in every nook and cranny of these salt flats of despair

several thousand wonderfully wet forests

                                                                           suddenly

spring from the earth.

*

Oh certainty gone astray, oh runaway fish

in the ponds of slippery mirror within mirror!

I am a clear lagoon; now through the enchantment of love,

find a path from the mirror-ponds to me!

*

I think

my hand

              has never been

                           so glad, so grand:

I feel

in my eyes

                  a cascade of bloody tears

that stirs a never-setting sun to breathe a song;

I sense

in my every vein

                                 in every heartbeat

                                                         now

the bells of a passing caravan ring: wake up!

*

She came one night, naked, through the door

                                                                       like water's soul

At her breast, two fish, and in her hand a mirror

her wet hair smelling of moss

                                    as if braided with moss.

I cried out from the threshold of despair,

"Oh, certainty now found—I won't neglect you again!"