44

Sport After Steve Paxton

The effort to be sat in her window, writing
As a moon wanes high above an inky B 'n' B
Between her on-screen letters and a rising tide

Is not as great a stress as standing still. Is
Relaxation any less a sport than rowing light
Say, or the musculature that lifts blues to her

Lip? When standing still requires awareness
And attention brought to moment on suspension
Martins animate bare winter trees of memory.

To neglect each leaping moment that seems
To adrenalise much as a near accident might,
Approaches a pedestrian body of forgetting.

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48

the letters of the good mothers
are drenched in secular eloquence
if all the limbs of my body were tongues
I could not publish such excellence

they do not hasten to condemn
deformities of the human heart
yet ambition may become a woman
muliere in silentio discat

the properties of a hare may briefly
make a woman handsome
but I would rather ungreased hinges
and the study of declensions

osculatur me osculo
oris sui decrees the Song
if lips were letters I could more straitly
be given to wondering

for this pure grammar of kisses
may express a pious verity
that mitigates the condemnations
of lascivious sorority

if a harp can cure a king's sickness
then song may heal my sin
I merely lust to follow studies
that are celebrated in men

(Freely constructed from a letter by Sor Juana de la Cruz)