A Woman (For L.B.)

Aegean sea, Pillion, Hiroshi Sugimoto, 1990.

Exciting not by excitement only; subtler: 

'beautiful & unhappy''s not enough: 

a woman engrossed

 in delight or anguish or simply in passing

from point to point: stretched proudly

ready to twang or sing at pluck or stroke.

Northward: now her green eyes

 are looking, looking for a door

 to open in a wall where

 there's no door, none unless she makes it: 

an ice-wall to be broken by hand. Northward

 in fact and in fact: 

 now her green eyes spend their sea-depth & glitter

 remotely; she's gone, who stays so strangely. 

And we--we look at each other: 

 'Where should this music be?'

Denise Levertov