The Bath

Gary Snyder

Washing Kai in the sauna,

The kerosene lantern set on a box

outside the ground-level window,

Lights up the edge of the iron stove and the

washtub down on the slab

Steaming air and crackle of waterdrops

brushed by on the pile of rocks on top

He stands in warm water

Soap all over the smooth of his thigh and stomach

“Gary don’t soap my hair!”

—his eye-sting fear—

the soapy hand feeling

through and around the globes and curves of his body

up in the crotch,

And washing-tickling out the scrotum, little anus,

his penis curving up and getting hard

as I pull back skin and try to wash it

Laughing and jumping, flinging arms around,

I squat all naked too,

is this our body?

Sweating and panting in the stove-steam hot-stone

cedar-planking wooden bucket water-splashing

kerosene lantern-flicker wind-in-the-pines-out

sierra forest ridges night—

Masa comes in, letting fresh cool air

sweep down from the door

a deep sweet breath

And she tips him over gripping neatly, one knee down

her hair falling hiding one whole side of

shoulder, breast, and belly,

Washes deftly Kai’s head-hair

as he gets mad and yells—

The body of my lady, the winding valley spine,

the space between the thighs I reach through,

cup her curving vulva arch and hold it from behind,

a soapy tickle a hand of grail

The gates of Awe

That open back a turning double-mirror world of

wombs in wombs, in rings,

that start in music,

is this our body?

The hidden place of seed

The veins net flow across the ribs, that gathers

milk and peaks up in a nipple—fits

our mouth—

The sucking milk from this our body sends through

jolts of light; the son, the father,

sharing mother’s joy

That brings a softness to the flower of the awesome

open curling lotus gate I cup and kiss

As Kai laughs at his mother’s breast he now is weaned

from, we

wash each other,

this our body

Kai’s little scrotum up close to his groin,

the seed still tucked away, that moved from us to him

In flows that lifted with the same joys forces

as his nursing Masa later,

playing with her breast,

Or me within her,

Or him emerging,

this is our body:

Clean, and rinsed, and sweating more, we stretch

out on the redwood benches hearts all beating

Quiet to the simmer of the stove,

the scent of cedar

And then turn over,

murmuring gossip of the grasses,

talking firewood,

Wondering how Gen’s napping, how to bring him in

soon wash him too—

These boys who love their mother

who loves men, who passes on

her sons to other women;

The cloud across the sky. The windy pines.

the trickle gurgle in the swampy meadow

this is our body.

fire inside and boiling water on the stove

We sigh and slide ourselves down from the benches

wrap the babies, step outside,

black night & all the stars.

Pour cold water on the back and thighs

Go in the house—stand steaming by the center fire

Kai scampers on the sheepskin

Gen standing hanging on and shouting,

“Bao! bao! bao! bao! bao!”

This is our body. Drawn up crosslegged by the flames

drinking icy water

hugging babies, kissing bellies,

Laughing on the Great Earth

Come out from the bath.

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O Ye Tongues by Anne Sexton

First Psalm

Let there be a God as large as a sunlamp to laugh his heat at you.

Let there be an earth with a form like a jigsaw and let it fit for all of ye.

Let there be the darkness of a darkroom out of the deep. A worm room.

Let there be a God who sees light at the end of a long thin pipe and lets it in.

Let God divide them in half.

Let God share his Hoodsie.

Let the waters divide so that God may wash his face in first light.