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Only that it should be beautiful, Only that it should be beautiful, O, beautiful Red green blue—the wet lips Laughing Or the curl of the white shell And the beauty of women, the perfect tendons Under the skin, the perfect life That can twist in a flood Of desire Not truth but each other The bright, bright skin, her hands wavering In her incredible need
From New Collected Poems. Copyright © 2002 by Linda Oppen. Used with permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Cell by cell the baby made herself, the cells
Made cells. That is to say
The baby is made largely of milk. Lying in her father’s arms, the little seed eyes
Moving, trying to see, smiling for us
To see, she will make a household
To her need of these rooms—Sara, little seed,
Little violent, diligent seed. Come let us look at the world
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Me! he says, hand on his chest.
Actually, his shirt.
And there, perhaps,
The question.
Pioneers! But trailer people?
Wood box full of tools—
The most
American. A sort of
Shrinking
in themselves. A
Less than adult: old.
A pocket knife,
A tool—
And I
Here talking to the man?
The sky
That dawned along the road
And all I've been
Is not myself? I think myself
Is what I've seen and not myself
A man marooned
No longer looks for ships, imagines
Anything on the horizon.