Self-Portrait of Body as Night
By Peter Mason
After “All night I hear the noise of water sobbing” by Alejandra Pizarnik, tr. by Patricio Ferrari and Forrest Gander
What billion a glimmer of body spreading its skin
between this vast gloam;—to hold the thick
blackened milk; spotted feast of sumption;
I am, or it feels, like a trying, so often,
of tide; algaeic pins of light; wet
mimic of sea that feeds and pulls quiet
at the small water of hope;—what I mean to say
is that I have wanted nearly every day to die
but lived through night’s unmaking; bright wound
of lake whispering from shore; shells crushed
and sparkling in the dark; sand that spills pallid
in the hem of mooncast; the gray glisten of alewife
shallowed in a gathered end; the little deaths
I left; the ungiving silt sobbing in the depths.
