Pain

When God sleeps does not the Beloved sleep

In his arms? How can they attend my pain then,

Being so much in love? And shall I weep

That she is great with stars? It is a sin.

The sea, the sea. How quiet are the drowned

Folded away from the sun. How cold, how still.

And yet soul wakes, rises gull-like wound

In mists, starved, strong, very beautiful.

All things are changing. Already the water darkens.

Tam sick with want of weeping. The skies darken.

The waste of the ocean shore, its heaped up essences,

The barnacles that cling, the living stars ask when.

They wake, they wake. Her breasts, his hands. Who cries,

"My sleep, my love, I live only beneath your eyes."?