“It May Be No One Should Be Opened”

You know I am serious about the whales.
Their moving vast through that darkness,
silent.
It is intolerable.
Or Crivelli, with his fruit.
The Japanese.
Or the white flesh of casaba melons
always in darkness.
That darkness unopened from the beginning.
The small emptiness at the middle
in darkness.
As virgins.
The landscape unlighted.
Lighted by me.
Lighted as my hands
in the darkroom
pinching film on the spindle
in absolute dark.
The work difficult
and my hands soon large and brilliant.
Virgins.
Whales.
Darkness and Lauds.
But it may be that no one should be opened.
The deer come back to the feeding station
at the suddenly open season.
The girls find second loves.
Semele was blasted
looking on the whale
in even his lesser panoply.
It was the excellent Socrates ruined Athens.
Now you have fallen crazy
and I have run away.
It’s not the dreams.
It’s this love of you
that grows in me
malignant.