Fourteen long years she lies oh she lies oh And love as she lies she dreams in white stone Colonnade marbled and balcony empty A broken band brokenly marks broken time Fourteen years she dreams oh she dreams oh As dreamer she dreams on, as lover entwines Her limbs grow round his limbs, she drinks from a bottle She walks through the city she's lost and then found Fourteen long years, further back scattered She sits on some beach and reasons with him In the secret red moist heart, the most loved and most dark The flame shaft and fierce dart, the rose-leaf and moss-part Spreadeagled like starfish, most pain and most fear
Like flower of sea-gra**, most fragile and harmless Most fiery and bloody, most childlike and wrinkled This starfish, this spider, most wretched and great Do not cry for me; let me show you the path On which we neither come nor go She smiles at me lake-wide, wet-brown-eyed and dark-skinned Some dark moon unmoved stalks through our loss Do not spend this night with me; I shall make the fallen blind see This too another broken toy, from broken girl gift to broken boy I ask my sea-blue rushing mother: Shall she hear the lions roar?