Self-Portrait of Body as Night

After “All night I hear the noise of water sobbing” by Alejandra Pizarnik, tr. by Patricio Ferrari and Forrest Gander

What billion a glimmer of body spreading its skin

between this vast gloam;—to hold the thick

blackened milk; spotted feast of sumption;

I am, or it feels, like a trying, so often,

of tide; algaeic pins of light; wet

mimic of sea that feeds and pulls quiet

at the small water of hope;—what I mean to say

is that I have wanted nearly every day to die

but lived through night’s unmaking; bright wound

of lake whispering from shore; shells crushed

and sparkling in the dark; sand that spills pallid

in the hem of mooncast; the gray glisten of alewife

shallowed in a gathered end; the little deaths

I left; the ungiving silt sobbing in the depths.

Source: Poetry (December 2022)