Imaging, by Marge Piercy

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Imaging

I am my body
This is not a dress, a coat;
not a house I live in;
not a suit of armor for close fighting;
not a lump of meat in which I nuzzle like a worm.

I issue orders from the command tower;
I look out the twin windows staring,
reading the buzz from ears, hands, nose,
weighing, interpreting, forecasting.
Downstairs faceless crowds labor.

I am those mute crowds rushing,
I must glide down the ladder of bone,
I must slide down the silken ropes
of the nerves burning in their darkness,
I must ease into the warm egg of the limbic brain.

Like learning the chemical language of ants,
We enter and join to the body lying
Down as if to a lover. We ourselves,
Caves we must explore in the dark,
Eyes shut tight and hands unclenched.

Estranged from ourselves to the point
Where we scarcely credit the body’s mind,
In we go reclaiming what once we knew.
We wrestle the dark angel of our hidden
Selves, fighting all night for our lives.

Who is this angel I meet on my back,
Radiant as molten steel pouring from the ladle,
Dark as the inside of the moon?
Whose is this strength I wrestle?
-the other my lost holy self.

~~by: Marge Piercy