No one will ever be articulate enough
to translate this particular light into words
& set those numinous words into a sentence
whose elegant structure could provide the timelessness
light grants the form of this sleeping woman,
the sheets a rumpled halo
suggesting a kind of ragged holiness
to this bed bathed in light that can only be
coming into this room from the window
through which a vague but definable landscape,
despite the centuries, is still visible,
a terrain of lush gardens & fountains
where water nymphs splash one another so
their garments cling to their bodies while they sing
aubades with lyrics that are too faint to ever be
heard clear enough by this woman
who, if she wasn’t asleep, would assume it was
simply the startling music of starlings
who flit among the shrubs that glisten with
the fine water of the fountains, caught in a breeze,
misting everything as a kind of blessing,
the light reflected through the beads an urgent
& indefinable plea for anything
that could even hope to pass for articulation.
