The Harlot Sings of Wisdom

I sing, who have known men and men:

Who have known them to walk a little while

And then be seated,

Eating, Rowing,

Filling the Earth with their dead,

Emptying the cannister that Love built; men.

I sing not of love but of flashes of silver

In deep water.

I whose eyeful is no angel's eyeful.

My mouth is lined with pearl, my heart with bronze;

The graver parts tin out their sharpening song.

I sing not of love but of flashes of silver.

A rose on the skin is a coin in the mouth of another.

I sing not of love but of silver.

My fear is the fear of the moth on the

Windowpane: frightened that

Air could be solid, be walked upon.

I sing not of love.

I sing that the warm woolen mist is a

King to the thunderclout, to

Shaking out a sheet against the sky.

I sing.

I with my eyeful of sin and my

Rapid tin beat.

I sing to a room I could die in.

I will enter as a light would enter.

I will sleep with the shamelessness of

Animals who have known no Man but

God.