To me she is in her pyjamas
Crusaders brought from Persia
to dress up the ladies
they weren’t to touch
Look what I brought you
these ampoules of feeling
women who sing in the cold hall at the cressets,
sing with me
Me in the cotton with my halberd
you in your wardrobe at prayers
sky with its feeling of entourage
for those who don’t move with the night
Lover, does it matter
how the river spends its glitter,
where the freighter leaves its sugar
as it swings through the low mountain towns?
Look what it brought you –
these wedding knives in velvet
they fit you like nightclothes
made of others’ labour,
Children twisting wire
for the diadems you wear.
Why is it the lesser
never you think will have power?
The thinking of the loving
is the loving
the ankle sings most sweetly
in its sock
I do not plan to die
like the feminine pronoun
I have pulled up my socks again and again for you
I will pull them and stand here and sing
Photograph by Devin Ford
