Paterson: Book Four, Chapter III, p. 191-92

* This poem is the second in a series dealing with the Haitian President of Williams' text. The first part can be read HERE.

Women to the Haitian President, upon Gathering at Dusk near Point Croix

We
who have been your lovers
have talked this through:

Yes,
our beauty is collective.
It is spun
from the sameness of our contours,
it is outlined
in black, gathered
and flocking against
the background of our dusk,
where we have been threaded
over that losing light,
crossed and woven
in darkest silhouette
upon the loom;

and Yes,
the shape of breasts we know
are enough, more than -
doubled and doubling
the smaller joy of your
heart,
so much of us
in pairs
you'd say;

we say
your conclusions could only be
reached this way:
multiplicitly.

But Man,
who loved us each
divided, parts of
a whole seen so
distantly,
great God, what you did not know
in this shadowed shape,
What!

Our eyes;
twinned depths
of night, suns each
setting on waters paired
and equally bottomless.

Dearest man,
I say,
as I, as
I, as
I, as
I:
what love,
love, love,
for this beauty
has been lost?

KMC 11-8-06