1.

There is no portion of the air around her
not touched by her gestures, no
figure in the carpet

that has not felt the quick pressure of
her feet, her hands, her back—
and this but half

an hour in a new room—making us listen
for the first time for music:
the light's magnificat

of cocktail glasses and the nudging throb
of artillery where clouds
are piled up like

stones beyond scorched hills, the silences.
We see the glistening of her
collarbones and

between her shoulder blades the dark stain
on her tee-shirt, and we know
that to orchestrate

those silences, each of a different taste
and texture, is a labor of love:
no labor at all.

2.

That lithe girl
is masquerading in your
imperial lassitude, your pillowy ease.

Hers is the slight
tartness I find in your
mouth, for all the Turkish Delight of those

whispered words;
hers, the wiry strands
my fingers discover in your flounced hair.

Inside the woman -
caparisoned, motionless -
dances the girl; inside the girl—scintillant,

flexible—dawdles
the child: Amelia-Anne,
raw-shinned, naked but sexless, disarticulate

and scared. And I,
too, Herodias, know your
jealousy, watching your Salome, observing

your own flesh
made capable once more;
and yet I know Amelia-Anne is somewhere there.

I catch her out,
primping in the mirror—
her stockings sagging and her shoes too big.