How often words have failed me
I would be hard pressed to say,
so easily persuaded that tongue
and lips and teeth have uses far other
than evangelist disputation.
Your breasts and ankles and pale anticline
make eloquence the refuge of uneasiness.
Words serve to direct us in our dreams,
to conspire in broken daylight,
pinned to the jilted pillow.
Tannhauser whispers an inhuman song.
The poet stamps like a spoiled cat,
and Venus holds her cries with tiny teeth.
The mounted panther feeds and is fed,
loud as death its necessary silence.