So. There is to be punishment –
Your silence in my knuckles,
under each shoulder blade.

And into the shafts of each bone,
you send cold that bites,
that has no manners –
here, in the grey halo
of the sea’s edge –
and call it age.

Well! Well! The sky snags
mountains and falls,
like so many plumes
lost by birds.

I will take this. Deliver.
Take the skin from my face
and know it. I face the salt.
Silence is the whip.

And those bones of young men,
laid deep in acres of hell and grief
in that far-off other world, or there
where the ocean pinches
a continent off, roughly,
like a bud that must be nipped
if the plant is to grow, are as nothing
in the progress of your wrath.

Yes, fling an ocean at me.
I say each wave is perfect
and I am safe in the hammock
of my devotion. It is flawless,
my praise is flawless, my weeping
and the grinding of my old knees,
these things are flawless adorations
and I am, always, your eager bride.