portrait by Larry Rivers
O beautiful, my relic bone,
Whitening like the foreign moon,
Whose luster consummates my tomb.
O beautiful, my fresh rose-grown,
Rose-rose white from that small bone
Whose vapor is the breath I own
And tendrils of my blood curl in.
Rose-rose white, the flesh I am
But murderer eye and murdered!
For all the flesh becomes an eye:
I am no flesh while yet eye's eaten
The rose-rose flesh bare to the bone,
Bare to the bone! But that flesh still
By heat of dews renews again
O bless, occurrence of the moon
When actual flesh of the both is gone,
My flesh the air the eye takes in,
That flesh on bone the air the eye takes in,
Death-wedding the moon shines in
Whitening like the foreign moon,
Whose luster consummates my tomb.
O beautiful, my fresh rose-grown,
Rose-rose white from that small bone
Whose vapor is the breath I own
And tendrils of my blood curl in.
Rose-rose white, the flesh I am
But murderer eye and murdered!
For all the flesh becomes an eye:
I am no flesh while yet eye's eaten
The rose-rose flesh bare to the bone,
Bare to the bone! But that flesh still
By heat of dews renews again
O bless, occurrence of the moon
When actual flesh of the both is gone,
My flesh the air the eye takes in,
That flesh on bone the air the eye takes in,
Death-wedding the moon shines in
