METAMORPHOSES

A.
Out of Ovid’s book I seek a lover’s rendezvous after my wild childhood
She turns her back on me and flees, transparent as a dream,  
Khamsin wind reveals a tip
Of her nakedness, blows the hems of her dresses, curls in her tressses,
Exposes my passion. Already at her nape, her smooth neck,
The touch of my tongue freezes her limbs to the one marble statue
Of the gap between my parents’ faces.


B.
Like Ovid I understand only what lives, that is,
moves, rotes, dries, transforms itself, dies: becomes other.
At Telemachos’ touch the old kind overturns, like longing,
From outside to within and the fierce-looking ships sail away from him.


C.
Not the metamorphoses of tormented dreams: you wake up one morning
and you are a huge insect. But slowly and in a civilized manner:
the spindly insect joints grow slowly in your body, you diminish,
Love, explore trash, carve your name in the dust on earth.

D.
“Silently the still tree moves its top soundlessly”.

METAMORPHOSES