Batik Maker by VIRGINIA MORENO

Tissue of no seam and skin
Of no scale she weaves this:
Dream of a huntsman pale
That in his antlered
Mangrove waits
Ensnared;

And I cannot touch him.

Lengths of the dumb and widths
Of the deaf are his hair
Where wild orchids thumb
Or his parted throat surprise
To elegiac screaming
Only birds of
Paradise:

And I cannot wake him.

Shades of the light and shapes
Of the rain on his palanquin
Stain what phantom panther
Sleeps in the cage of
His skin and immobile
Hands;

And I cannot bury him.

Batik: a method of hand-printing a fabric by covering with removable wax the parts that will not be dyed