James Dickey
THE SWIMMER
The river stands, a shadow balanced open.
I stand. My skull makes a motion of closing
Over stems, between upward and downward–
Closed, it is pressed white
Listening to thirst graze formally among its vectors,
And lifted down, and the girl,
Each muscle of her body near a voice
Plucked and set beating harp-metal by the wedged sun
Between leaves and strings,
Falls from the opposite bank.
Toward the swinging paint of her shadow
Paired with a tongue that might be arched
And caught forever singing out
The dead intensity of the river
From the sleep of a blue mouth, brightening,
Yet
is
all sidling silence,
My head dips past its print, and the flesh goes,
And my eyes through the river's rain
(A wall burned gently from its nails) pass
From sun to moon: from sun to moon
Light of nausea, her hair dancing
Under the day-moth's dancing
Small step of suspension,
Ceases to shape back,
And under the water where I have loved
I
touch it with the echo of my face,
