Havenāt they moved like riversā
like Glory, like lightā
over the seven days of your body?
And wasnāt that good?
Them at your hipsā
isnāt this what God felt when he pressed together
the first Beloved:Ā Everything.
Fever. Vapor. Atman. Pulsus. Finally,
a sin worth hurting for. Finally, a sweet, a
You are mine.
It is hard not to have faith in this:
from the blue-brown clay of night
these two potters crushed and smoothed you
into beingāgrind, then curveābuilt your form upā
atlas of bone, fields of muscle,
one breast a fig tree, the other a nightingale,
both Morning and Evening.
O, the beautiful making they doā
of trigger and carve, suffering and starsā
Arenāt they, too, the dark carpenters
of your small church? Have they not burned
on the altar of your belly, eaten the bread
of your thighs, broke you to wine, to ichor,
to nectareous feast?
Havenāt they riveted your wrists, havenāt they
had you at your knees?
And when these hands touched your throat,
showed you how to take the appleĀ and the rib,
how to slip a thumb into your mouth and taste it all,
didnāt you sing out their ninety-nine namesā
Zahir, Aleph, Hands-time-seven,
Sphinx, Leonids,Ā locomotura,
Ribidium, August, and Septemberā
And when you cried out,Ā O, Prometheans,
didnāt they bring fire?
These hands, if not gods, then why
when you have come to me, and I have returned you
to that from which you cameābright mud, mineral-saltā
why then do you whisperĀ O, my Hecatonchire. My Centimani.
My hundred-handed one?
"The images and hands of this poem began building during Mass one Sunday. The reading was about the laying of hands on someone, and I began thinking of how my own hands work upon a body. How they do things both beautiful and awfulāto gently trace a throat in one moment, to hold it tightly in anotherāa type of sweet wreckery that makes me feel godlike and helpless all at once."
āN. Diaz
