The Touch and
The Taste
Urszula M. Benka

Heavy, ripe are the fruit: Jupiter,
Saturn, the Earth, Mars.
They spill their moons,
squirt drops of asteroids.

So says the gloomy stranger
touching my breasts.

I'm sitting in his house in front of a fire;
flames and fruit are reflected
in the dampness of my sex,
cut-up pomegranates, huge apples.

An oak library glistens
in the dampness of my sex.
I'm thinking about an oak and about centuries,
about rituals.

The stranger leans his face
toward my sex.

In its concave-convex dampness
the old face reflects in red.

On the library's massive oak
there's a configuration of planets
and a gold patera with fruit.

--- From Ambers Aglow:
An Anthology of Contemporary
Polish Women's Poetry
Regina Grol, Editor
© 1996 Host Publications
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