From The Kenyon Review, New Series, Winter 1981, Vol. III, No. 1
Photograph taken in Chungking, 1941, after a panic in an air-raid shelter that left 4,000 dead
There is no
end to the beauty of the body, even
here, on the steps outside the shelter,
the fragile goodness of the foot, the pallor
of the naked stomach, the navel floating on the
skin beyond its use, the body
beautiful beyond its use.
Give me the choice of living children or these
delicate dead children and I will
choose the living, but given the choice of
this or nothing I choose this hand curled
up and cupped, this naked woman
stretched across layers of torsoes, her foot
dark on heel and sole and blinding
white in the instep.
It does not stop its
calling to us, even from the total
silence on the stone stairs, the body
does not cease its crying out for
mercy, for another chance,
for love—even in death, speaking
in the language of desire.
