Galatea Encore

As though the mercury's under its tongue, it won't

talk. As though with the mercury in its sphincter,

immobile, by a leaf-coated pond

a statue stands white like a blight of winter.

After such snow, there is nothing indeed: the ins

and outs of centuries, pestered heather.

That's what coming full circle means -

when your countenance starts to resemble weather,

when Pygmalion's vanished. And you are free

to cloud your folds, to bare the navel.

Future at last! That is, bleached debris

of a glacier amid the five-lettered "never."

Hence the routine of a goddess, nee

alabaster, that lets roving pupils gorge on

the heart of color and the temperature of the knee.

That's what it looks like inside a virgin.

1983, translated by the author.