This is called "From the Wardrobe."
And the image in the first stanza is complicatedly put.
So, I apologize and I'll explain it.
It's merely a poorly operated clothesline
between apartment buildings.
Collecting hearts, drawing you out.
Like the billowy message the pulleys wind between ledges.
For which you stood undressing, for which no one objected
long to showing the tongue so.
I shucked the thick skin just by talking, sometimes.
But sometimes the clothesline sags
with labor and recklessness.
The faded house prints, the making do.
And you see in these tenements nothing
of the young girl whose hair was a river her lover set sail
on and out from.
And if the pulleys are soot by sooty sheets now-- excuse me.
Of the young girl whose hair was a river
her lover set sail on and out from.
And if the sails are sooty sheets now
and if the pulleys creak to go nowhere,
what is that on the ocean.
The woman abandoned, is an old story
the gulls will not feed on.
Every so often, you must dress it up.