Says here is a girl who gets written like palms,

says here is a girl who moves paint like Tahiti.

Teeth infinite white and infinite many and with

them she infinite eat me, and mouth full of invert

and cane and coarse sugar, and her dresses all

came from across

the water, and they rode a light chop

on the sea in fast ships, and she owns twenty

pairs of the shape of her hands, and slashed silk

on her shoulder like claws of a parrot, and here

the love poem delights:

the word “parrot” will never

be replaced, and will continue meaning always

exactly what it means, as none of the words

in this sentence have done—come read me again

in a hundred years and see how I keep my shape!

Love poem back to your subject, the word “parrot”

is not the right woman for you, hard to hold

and too much red; love poem, think long arms

and flies nowhere.

I remember her now, it says, and says she is far

from me, says hear how her voice is a Western

slope, when west meant the sun it rose and set

there, and monstrous the shadows of flowers all

down it, in the days before voice meant something

you wrote with. Love poem as we used to write it

says her small brown paw is adorable, which is

to say brown as we used to use it, which is to say

just sunburned,

just monstrous the shadows of flowers all on it,

which is to say paw as we used to use it, which is

to say a human hand, and human as we used

to use it, which is to say almost no one among us.

Blond of course and blond. Blond as a coil of rope,

and someone hauled on her somewhere, and loop

after loop flew out of her helpless. The someone

was out at sea, and language on my shoulder like

claws of a parrot. I sailed the world over

to deliver one letter, one letter of even one letter,

one word, and one word as we used to use it:

in those days she was the only Lady, in those days

she wrote a small round hand,

and I hauled on it saw it fly loop by loop out of her.