HANDS

Eyes are the spoken word, but dark
will make them silent, where
the lovely shapes of rhetoric
have no-one left to hear.

A body built into an arm,
and the blood shouting, still
though passionate as heat, is dumb
like a kind animal.

Of seven kisses that have speech 
in characters or times,
none is a messenger of much:
they only tell their names.

Hands are like letters to be read
in braille or fire; they light
the body that becomes their road,
the mind they re-create.

Subtle in mood or motion, they
are thoughts of silent men;
and able messengers, to be
not-thoughtless for their own.

They that carry everything,
learning and thinking, look
past one another to the tongue
within, that will not speak.

The body in its amorous belt, 
or eyes and lips that meet,
know nothing that they have not felt,
say nothing they forget.

And darkness the girl-eater has 
no power upon them: give
to lust the subtlest of his ways
- only the hands can love.