Written on the Skin

Body of Book

This is one way to talk about a book:
I woke into the locus of my body.
In sleep’s thick envelope, what poems fit?
Dream-card sealed with a kiss and then sent out.
What we meant was musing, nothing else.
Did the dream not spring from memory?
Remembering who said what or what I read:
The sin of middle age, misattribution.
Cherished, it writes itself upon your skin.
I could tell the time of day without looking at the sun.
Salted with a tear and wiped and sent:
You take it with you to the land of sleep,
Body of book to read and to be read to,
Out into the world, its face still damp.

Cherished, it writes itself upon your skin.
You take it with you to the land of sleep.
Remembering who said what, or what I read,
I could tell the time of day without looking at the sun.
Body of book: to read and to be read to,
Salted with a tear and wiped and sent
(The sin of middle age, misattribution)
Out into the world, its face still damp,
Dream-card sealed with a kiss and then sent out
Until we all went wearily to bed.
I woke into the locus of my body
Where what we meant was kindness, nothing else.
Did the dream not spring from memory?
This is one way to talk about a book.

— Rachel Hadas

Rachel Hadas is an American poet and professor. The poet Grace Schulman has written, “The poems are urgent, contemplative, and finely wrought. In them, antiquity illuminates the present as Rachel Hadas finds in ordinary human acts ‘what never was and what is eternal.'”

You can hear Rachel Hadas read this poem on Slate.