Error: SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1030 Got error 28 from storage engineError: SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1030 Got error 28 from storage engineError: SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1030 Got error 28 from storage engineError: SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1030 Got error 28 from storage engine "b o d y": Design Observer




05.24.10
James Merrill | Poetry

"b o d y"

Look closely at the letters. Can you see,
entering (stage right), then floating full,
then heading off — so soon —
how like a little kohl-rimmed moon
o plots her course from b to d

— as y, unanswered, knocks at the stage door?
Looked at too long, words fail,
phase out. Ask, now that body shines
no longer, by what light you learn these lines
and what the b and d stood for.


"b o d y" is © 2001 by The Literary Estate of James Merrill at Washington University, and is used by their permission. Image: Jupiter's Moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Photograph: NASA/ JHU-APL/Southwest Research Institute.

Read more poems here.






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