text: I wanted you, nameless Woman of the South,
  No wraith, but utterlyas still more alone
  The Southern Cross takes night
  And lifts her girdles from her, one by one
  High, cool,
  wide from the slowly smoldering fire
  Of lower heavens,
  vaporous scars!
  
  Eve! Magdalene!
  or Mary, you?
  
  Whatever callfalls vainly on the wave.
  O simian Venus, homeless Eve,
  Unwedded, stumbling gardenless to grieve
  Windswept guitars on lonely decks forever;
  Finally to answer all within one grave!
  
  And this long wake of phosphor,
  iridescent
  Furrow of all our traveltrailed derision!
  Eyes crumble at its kiss. Its long-drawn spell
  Incites a yell. Slid on that backward vision
  The mind is churned to spittle, whispering hell.
  
  I wanted you . . . The embers of the Cross
  Climbed by aslant and huddling aromatically.
  It is blood to remember; it is fire
  To stammer back . . . It is
  Godyour namelessness. And the wash
  
  All night the water combed you with black
  Insolence. You crept out simmering, accomplished.
  Water rattled that stinging coil, your
  Rehearsed hairdocile, alas, from many arms.
  Yes, Evewraith of my unloved seed!
  
  The Cross, a phantom, buckleddropped below the dawn.
  Light drowned the lithic trillions of your spawn.