Here you will find the Poem Love for a Hand of poet Karl Shapiro
Two hands lie still, the hairy and the white, And soon down ladders of reflected light The sleepers climb in silence. Gradually They separate on paths of long ago, Each winding on his arm the unpleasant clew That leads, live as a nerve, to memory. But often when too steep her dream descends, Perhaps to the grotto where her father bends To pick her up, the husband wakes as though He had forgotten something in the house. Motionless he eyes the room that glows With the little animals of light that prowl This way and that. Soft are the beasts of light But softer still her hand that drifts so white Upon the whiteness. How like a water-plant It floats upon the black canal of sleep, Suspended upward from the distant deep In pure achievement of its lovely want! Quietly then he plucks it and it folds And is again a hand, small as a child's. He would revive it but it barely stirs And so he carries it off a little way And breaks it open gently. Now he can see The sweetness of the fruit, his hand eats hers.
