Anniversary Poem by Marie Ponsot

The big doll being broken and the sawdust fall
all scattered by my shoes, not crying
I sit in my dark to discover o failure annulled
opens out in my hands a purse of golden
salvaged sovereigns, from floors of seas culled.

The dancing doll split in an anguish and all
the cords of its elegant limbs unstrung; I
stumble whistling; the bones of my skull
marvelously start to sing, the whole shell
of myself invents without peril and contains a court aubade.

I hid the dovesmall doll but something found it. Frightened
I gave the fire what was left. Surrounding, it mulled
dulcet over the melting jeweled two blue eyes.
That night our hearth was desolate, but then its stones
sprung flowered and the soaring rafters arched.

Now all the house laughs, the sun shouts out clearly: dawn!
the sea owes us all its treasures; under the soft the riotous
explosion of our waking kiss or gift, a stone plucked or shorn
free of gravity falls upward for us, slow, and lies there, quietly.