I opened up my shirt to show this man
the flaming heart he lit in me， and I was scooped up
like a lamb and carried to the dim warm.
I who should have been kneeling
was knelt to by one whose face
should be emblazoned on every coin and diadem：
no bare-chested boy， but Ulysses
with arms thick from the hard-hauled ropes.
He'd sailed past then clay gods
and the singing girls who might have made of him
a swine. That the world could arrive at me
with him in it， after so much longing—
impossible. He enters me and joy
sprouts from us as from a split seed.