Tattoo / Wallace Stevens

Tattoo

The light is like a spider.
It crawls over the water.
It crawls over the edges of the snow.
It crawls under your eyelids
And spreads its webs there — 
Its two webs.

The webs of your eyes
Are fastened
To the flesh and bones of you
As to rafters of grass.

There are filaments of your eyes
On the surface of the water
And in the edges of the snow.

---
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), 1916
from Harmonium, 1923

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

Wallace Stevens biography