Then this letter lands, its envelope
archipelagoes astir in aqua-marine, or,
looked at again, sky through cirrus,
but however I angle or edge it, a map
of endeavours made by a woman
who retains the use of only one hand.
When days attempting `the big look'
leave me vacant, and every resource
is drying up, I will open afresh
and hold before me Taina's evocations -
of peat bogs and conifers and auroras
bedazzling icy lakes. Such tawny stains,
such swirls and swims, I must take
on trust the thin-skinned tremblings
of my plain of mosses, callows, fens.
