The Poem Unwritten

The Poem Unwritten

For weeks the poem of your body,
of my hands upon your body
stroking, sweeping, in the rite of
worship, going
their way of wonder down
from neck-pulse to breast-hair to level
belly to cock -
for weeks that poem, that prayer
unwritten.
That poem unwritten, the act
left to the mind, undone. The years
a forest of giant stones, of fossil stumps,
blocking the altar.

Denise Levertov