Tortoises

that dense female,
Mounted and tense, spread-eagle, out-reaching

out of the shell
In tortoise-nakedness,
Long neck, and long vulnerable limbs extruded,
spread-eagle over her house-roof,
And the deep, secret, all-penetrating tail curved

beneath her walls,
Reaching and gripping tense, more reaching

anguish in uttermost tension
Till suddenly, in the spasm of coition, tupping

like a jerking leap, and oh!
Opening its clenched face from his outstretched

neck
And giving that fragile yell, that scream,
Super-audible,
From his pink, cleft, old-man's mouth,
Giving up the ghost,
Or screaming in Pentecost, receiving the ghost.

His scream, and his moment's subsidence,
The moment of eternal silence,
Yet unreleased, and after the moment, the
sudden, startling jerk of coition, and at once
The inexpressible faint yell--
And so on, till the last plasm of my body was

melted back
To