that poem unwritten, the act left to the mind, undone

For weeks the poem of your body, 

of my hands upon your body 

            stroking, sweeping, in the rite of 

            worship, going 

            their way of wonder down 

            from neck-pulse to breast-hair to level 

            belly to cock—
    

for weeks that poem, that prayer 

unwritten. 

            That poem unwritten, the act 

left to the mind, undone. The years 

a forest of giant stones, of fossil stumps, 

blocking the altar.

 

[Denise Levertov {1923-1997} ‘The Poem Unwritten’ from The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry]