Muriel Rukeyser as Energy

She knows the resonant dark

and she won’t be bound.

She goes into. 

A darkness has to touch,

and she wants to be exact.

She knows about the burning.

Her history is binary—

one of her hands is ash.

She’s always being born. 

She doesn’t look away;

her sex is coming forward.

Ask her if there’s laughter.

The frog in her head is jumping.

Myths arise where it sets.

She rides a flying horse.

It’s red; she’s stroking its neck.

She praises where it sweats

because the horse is available,

because it is required;

she loves its rascal mouth.

She wants to celebrate.

You know her reaching for words

and arranging them as fruit

knowing there is war, 

and cities rising and falling, and

a river flowing with at least one shore.

She is the speed of darkness—

witness her mystery, not her gown.

As she tries, as she dies,

Aphrodite is getting smaller

but she’s also burning hotter.

She is the dark one

and she won’t be bound.