Sport 10: Autumn 1993
Well
Well
I have seen her only once: she stole across the white courtyard like a word
for once wedded to her meaning, something swift and awful in the union,
unpronounceable. Then she lowered herself into the well where she
sometimes hangs shadow-wise for nights at a time. I felt then like a leaf
waiting to be coloured, transmuted by a dark sun, glittering with instability.
In what we perceived as hell she had something we had not: no relation of
eyes or tongue to take her in though she had both, her silence bigger than
injury, louder than the forest of clinking teacups that sought to drown her
in their sorrows. With barely a contour, an xyz on which to drape soft eyes,
(she was) something queenly in abandon.
I could not call her forth. When desire spreads you leaf-thin you can wait and wait for her but she will not come, no matter that you live in a light- filled building and she in a well.