Kino-Eyes, part I

Canto IV

She put her head to one side.

It was glossy like a black car in the sun;

her movements were clear-spun languid,

the color of the skin on her wrists.

She had a smile hiding somewhere on her lips,

the slope of her feet, the outline of her ankles,

the little symbols of life and girlhood and convictions

hanging, dangling, vibrating on her wrists and arms.

Canto X

That you feel at all-- that is

the greatest sanity and the wildest insanity.

Sterility, steel, bodies tangled up in heaps

after the machines of war have passed by,

and your heart goes on beating,

your heart goes on beating like

an untuned drum.

Canto IV

They asked her to pray when

she was on the verge of tears. She

betrayed herself, but not sorry. She held out

her wrists for handcuffs. She slid her hand up into her

black hair, felt her rough scalp, the hiddenness of

that, and her heart, and hummed to herself,

some old songs about nails and stones and love

and a new one about a bare scalp and bandages.

Canto X

You get scarred, you get scarred

on your body where your shoulder becomes

your back, where your cheek becomes your forehead,

where your jawbone slips back into your skull. You get

scarred, the way knives slip into bodies that have been

pressed resisting against the wall.