Читать книгу Tart Honey - Deborah Burnham - Страница 10

1. The Dyer’s Hands

Matisse prepared huge sheets of paper

for his cutouts, painting them the solid

blue of crayons, of his water jug, then sliced

in with his ten-inch shears. His hands, stained blue,

shaped dancing bodies, caressed the thick blue

paper into long slow ovals,

making our bodies think that his idea

of a body was the first one, and the best.

His dancers move like greyhounds, like blue

flutes that bend into their low notes, then curve

out again; we stretch our hands into the moonlight,

hoping to see blue.

2. Our Hands

My hands, your hands, assume the color

of each other’s bodies in the streetlight’s

acrid gold. At dawn, our skins are simplified

to blue, so pure, so softly curved you’d think

that we could stretch into the dancer’s lean

blue shapes, love softening our querulous

aging flesh. You stroke my back where I cannot

reach, so gently I wonder if the touch

is yours, or the pure blue light.