Fourteen long years she lies oh she lies oh
And love as she lies she dreams in white stone
Colonnade marbled and balcony empty
A broken band brokenly marks broken time
Fourteen years she dreams oh she dreams oh
As dreamer she dreams on, as lover entwines
Her limbs grow round his limbs, she drinks from a bottle
She walks through the city she's lost and then found
Fourteen long years, further back scattered
She sits on some beach and reasons with him
In the secret red moist heart, the most loved and most dark
The flame shaft and fierce dart, the rose-leaf and moss-part
Spreadeagled like starfish, most pain and most fear
Like flower of sea-grass, most fragile and harmless
Most fiery and bloody, most childlike and wrinkled
This starfish, this spider, most wretched and great
Do not cry for me; let me show you the path
On which we neither come nor go
She smiles at me lake-wide, wet-brown-eyed and dark-skinned
Some dark moon unmoved stalks through our loss
Do not spend this night with me;
I shall make the fallen blind see
This too another broken toy, from broken girl gift to broken boy
I ask my sea-blue rushing mother:
Shall she hear the lions roar?