Dancing Fairies, by August Malmström
Mary Oliver
The spirit
 likes to dress up like this:
   ten fingers,
     ten toes,
 
shoulders, and all the rest
 at night
   in the black branches,
     in the morning
 
in the blue branches
 of the world.
   It could float, of course,
     but would rather
 
plumb rough matter.
 Airy and shapeless thing,
   it needs
     the metaphor of the body,
 
lime and appetite,
 the oceanic fluids;
   it needs the body’s world,
     instinct
 
and imagination
 and the dark hug of time,
   sweetness
     and tangibility,
 
to be understood,
 to be more than pure light
   that burns
     where no one is—
 
so it enters us—
 in the morning
   shines from brute comfort
     like a stitch of lightning;
 
and at night
 lights up the deep and wondrous
   drownings of the body
     like a star.

from Dream Work, 1986

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