Rowing along, among the reeds, among the rushes
I heard your song, before my heart had time to hush it!
Smell of a stone fruit being cut and being opened
Smell of a low and of a lazy cinder smoking

And when the fire moves away
Fire moves away, son
Why would you say
I was the last one?

Scrape your knee; it is only skin
Makes the sound of violins

When you cut my hair, and leave the birds the trimmings
I am the happiest woman among all women

And the shallow
Water
Stretches as far as I can see
Knee-deep, trudging along
A seagull weeps; “so long”

I’m humming a threshing song
Until the night is over
Hold on!
Hold on!
Hold your horses back from the fickle dawn

I have got some business out at the edge of town
Candy weighing both of my pockets down
‘Til I can hardly stay afloat, from the weight of them
(and knowing how the common-folk condemn
What it is I do, to you, to keep you warm
Being a woman, being a woman)

But always up the mountainside you’re clambering
Groping blindly, hungry for anything:
Picking through your pocket linings - well, what is this?
Scrap of sassafras, eh sisyphus?

I see the blossoms broke and wet after the rain
Little sister, he will be back again
I have washed a thousand spiders down the drain
Spiders ghosts hang soaked and dangelin’
Silently from all the blooming cherry trees
In tiny nooses, safe from everyone
- nothing but a nuisance; gone now, dead and done
Be a woman, be a woman!

Though we felt the spray of the waves
We decided to stay till the tide rose too far
We weren’t afraid, cause we know what you are
And you know that we know what you are

Awful atoll
O, incalculable indiscreetness and sorrow!
Bawl, bellow:
Sibyl sea-cow, all done up in a bow

Toddle and roll;
Teeth an impalpable bit of leather
While yarrow, heather and hollyhock
Awkwardly molt along the shore

Are you mine?
My heart?
Mine anymore?

….

The cities we passed were a flickering wasteland
But his hand in my hand made them hale and harmless
While down in the lowlands the crops are all coming;
We have everything
Life is thundering blissful towards death
In a stampede of his fumbling green gentleness

You stopped by, I was all alive
In my doorway, we shucked and jived
And when you wept, I was gone:
See, I got gone when I got wise
But I can’t with certainty say we survived