Coral, by Derek Walcott

To end the month of July, I give you a short and beautiful poem of Derek Walcott, a poet whose verse always makes me think of the summer months back home in Norway.

Coral

This coral's shape echoes the hand
It hollowed. Its

Immediate absence is heavy. As pumice,
As your breast in my cupped palm.

Sea-cold, its nipple rasps like sand,
Its pores, like yours, shone with salt sweat.

Bodies in absence displace their weight,
And your smooth body, like none other,

Creates an exact absence like this stone
Set on a table with a whitening rack

Of souveniers. It dares my hand
To claim what lovers' hands have never known:

The nature of the body of another.