by James Dickey
A dog surroundingly howls. Painfully he is changing His voice from a voice for the moon To the voice he has for the sun. I stoop, and my hands are shining; I have picked up a piece of the sea To feel how a tall girl has swum Yesterday in it too deeply, And, below the light, has become More naked than Eve in the garden. I drop her strange body on the cobbles. My hands are shining with fever, And I understand The long, changing word of the dog With the moon dying out in his voice, And the pain when the sun came up For the first time on angel-shut gates, In its rays set closer than teeth.
