With this next poem, I took the idea
from the visual artist of creating a study,
a collection of sketches.
And I was interested in the idea of going
from something very large to something smaller
in the course of it.
I also reference symmetry in this poem.
But it's actually not the symmetry
of the title of the collection, which is radial symmetry.
This is symmetry of octopuses, which actually are bilateral,
just in case you were wondering
[LAUGHTER]
"Study for Love's Body, One--
Landscape with Yellow Birds."
"The theories of love have become
tremulous and complicated, the way snow falls
or Saturn revolves repeatedly around some distance
where space is nothing yet still something that separates.
Never mind time.
Caterpillars have turned the fruit trees into body bags.
The children paint the mandibles of fallen ones
with silver meant for nursery stars.
Without the immense responsibility of sympathy,
these small deaths are nothing more than artifice.
Like a single magnolia in a cut glass bowl,
we have no idea where our roots went so suddenly."
"Two-- Architecture in Ruins."
"Third floor of the doll factory,
ferns suck carbon and sharper chemicals
from air near the women working.
They're hunched over tables of worked wood.
Half of everyone is painting eyes and lashes
on porcelain heads.
The rest are threading hands to sleeves.
Outside in the courtyard, a smattering of doves rise.
Have you ever wanted to kiss a stranger's hands?"
"Three-- Gardens Without Bats or Moss."
"Gauguin writes to Theo van Gogh that in his painting
he wants to suggest the idea of suffering without ever
explaining what kind."
"Four-- In Stone Archways."
"The light is spilt green milk, which
is languorous as the red monkey Gauguin painted
by the brown body of Anna, the Javanese.
At the Chinese market, I buy two red teacups
and a can of coconut milk.
I think Gauguin wouldn't know how Anna loved that monkey
and saying to him late at night.
Everywhere the sea screams at me, a great pink slab
of octopus arm, beside it baby seasoned in orange spices.
Such symmetry.
Surely they swam through the night like thirsty flowers.
I think you had it right when you said love
is the mathematics of distance.
Split like a clam on ice, I feel raw, half eaten.
I rot in the cold blue of the ego, the crushed velvet
of Anna's chair."