"Infinite Bliss" by Sharon Olds

Infinite Bliss


When I first saw snow cover the air
with its delicate hoofprints, I said I would never
live where it did not snow, and when
the first man tore his way into me,
and tore up the passageway,
and came to the small room, and pulled the
curtain aside that I might enter, I knew I could
never live apart from them
again, the strange race with their massive
bloodied hooves. Today we lay in our
small bedroom, dark gold with
reflected snow, and while the flakes climbed
delicately down the sky, you
came into me, pressing aside
the curtain, revealing the small room,
dark gold with reflected snow,
where we lay, and where you entered me and
pressed the curtain aside, revealing
the small room, dark gold with
reflected snow, where we lay.


Source of the text - Sharon Olds, Strike Sparks: Selected Poems 1980-2002. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004, p. 7.

TJB: Horses, snow & sex: this lyric uses boldfaced metaphors & enacts a telescopic regression by repeating its terms room, curtain, gold, & snow.