I put on moonlight salve, though what you said
still stings and festers: how I can’t feel love,
or joy, or grief as you do—teasings of
a bully dangling life above my head
as if I were a lump of leaping clay.
Tell me, O Living One, of high emotion:
the flash-flood tears, the spasms of elation—
how’s having all that passion?
Suddenly
the moon contracts into an upright slit;
the stars blink on and off, and start to flow.
No, not stars—glints of light upon the scales
of a great snake. The false night sky uncoils;
the beast descends; and as our gazes meet
its low voice rumbles: Would you like to know?