A Painter

She spoke and cast thin scars upon your hands--
scalding and marking--her voice--a blooming aster--
a laurel tree--scattering seedy strings of thought--
bequeathing her soil to us--shading and spoiling us--
sprouting and sheltering us from the ballasts of her song--

I should like to carve her lined face, around
her eyes, below her jaw, cutting each into
teemed rhyme. To feel the bridge of her nose,
smooth beneath my fingers and thin lips, parted,
and shaping, finally molding life into geometric form.

But no model rests so long for my hands
to brand them into beauty. Shall it always be I,
stunned with harmony and never I, Jovian
seducer of dreams to my sculpting grasp?
Shall I only ever have these letters to read?