O Breath
Elliott Carter, Elizabeth Bishop
Beneath that loved and celebrated breast
Silent, bored really blindly veined
Grieves, maybe lives and lets
Live, passes bets
Something moving but invisibly
And with what clamor why restrained
I cannot fathom even a ripple
(See the thin flying of nine black hairs
Four around one five the other nipple
Flying almost intolerably on your own breath.)
Equivocal, but what we have in common's bound to be there
Whatever we must own equivalents for
Something that maybe I could bargain with
And make a separate peace beneath
Within if never with
