do not speak,
you may yet be released.

I am glad enough to depart
though I have never tasted life
as in these last weeks.

It is a strange life,
patterned in fire and letters
on the prison pavement.
If I glance up
it is written on the walls,
it is cut on the floor,
it is patterned across
the slope of the roof.

I am weak--weak--
last night if the guard
had left the gate unlocked,
I could not have ventured to escape,
but one thought serves me now,
with strength.
As I pass down the corridor
past desperate faces at each cell,
your eyes and my eyes may meet.

You will be dark, unkempt,
but I pray for one glimpse of your face--
why do I want this?
I who have seen you at the banquet,
each flower of your hyacinth-circlet,
white against your hair.

SEA IRIS

1.

Weed, moss-weed,
root tangled in sand,
sea-iris, brittle flower,
one petal like a shell
is broken,
and you print a shadow
like a thin twig.

Fortunate one,
scented and stinging,
rigid myrrh-bud,
camphor-flower,
sweet and salt--you are wind
in our nostrils.

2.

Do the murex-fishers
drench you as they pass?
Do your roots drag up colour
from the sand?
Have they slipped gold under you--
rivets of gold?

Band of iris-flowers
above the waves,