For Gordon Clark

One comes back
always to the
same dark
corner across
the mind the
half lot the
brick dark
screen or
movie screen or
patch open
in the roof
the stars shine
through, an
animal looks
down into
and the eyes
shine

I am lost in the face
in front of me. Yours, of some
girl I have never seen before,
the photograph taken —
 
into the wall, or where the eyes
look upward ecstatic
on out of the picture, and the dark corner
settles, is loved in, hands
 
out of the picture touch,
and the body gives to.  Where in the darkness
of the corner across the way in this room
her face bends, looks up, smiles, the skin
 
rough
and to be loved.

Where, and what
entrance? are to
those people not ever
known before, to meet
what is at the back
of the head, looking away
to the front, or what is
beyond the entrance
to the picture,
looking only
toward us. Cross
in the dark, bend
in the dark corner
out of the frame
might be endlessly
the whole open body there
 
Only to know
is the only value —
that one comes back to,
always, to the same
corner
 
… Rough,
and to be loved.

[November 1964, San Francisco, California]