What She First Said -stephanie pope
( Alice Poetry Series)

"Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves.'
-Her Ugliness, The Duchess of Alice

i... don't know what she first said to you when she first said. the
the first-said
eye of her
lives and repeats itself over and over in you and
like an 'and' ending a sentence without ending it, it
will take you a lifetime to repeat to me what she first 'said and.'
Nay,
it will take, as it makes your break-away in sides
a thousand
ten thousand
and
over and over make them into you and.

i...will not love you less the more you repeat this first-eye thing telling me of you in all the ways you say it
the First-Said
as if a first as two
splits the two and
they again and then again
as if the First-Said itself began the moment it began in forming
you and.

i...suppose this is how she makes you you
like love makes love when love mates with you and.
also like the First-Said eye of her says 'I" and makes that mean poetry

i...don't know what she first said when she first-said to you. But, you-and
keeps trying to tell me and so you
write me words like when your "face of experience was a moon turning in a space of infinitely open dimension"
and. "as if it wasn't, how could you know" and.
"you thought you recognized me, she said"

Jupiter has nine moon faces, a cat nine lives, nine months in-forming makes human an embryo,something incomplete
faces...lives...months
repeating what she first said in complete
nine is the First-Said eye of her without end and.
something of the first grows in the last and the last (like the first) repeats itself always this trace of the active and.
think of her like a twinning space tweens the active and the passive act
holds them together in their unessence 'ance' and imitates that likeness, you
(whom also you just won't seem like.)

Since she remains unmarked in the experience saying the sense
you can't recognize her in the sound so you remain without her and. she
remains unsaid. She is the First-Said and.

she makes you like yourself outside
and like yourself in a likeness like you and.
you won't recognize her (you won't!) And yet, that won't diminish what the First-Said eye of her
first said to you

whom i know because i can experience this differ ance of you that both differs you and. defers