Across
Across - meaning Summary
Crossing Into the Beloved
The poem depicts erotic union as a passage from self into another person. The speaker seeks dissolution and proof of darkness, using vivid bodily images—eyes, tongue, blood, veins—to show a loss of individual boundaries. Desire functions as a crossing: surrender, amnesia, and a mask of blood imply both passion and self-erasure. The closing image frames intimacy as movement toward "the other side of life," a transformative, almost ritualized encounter.
Read Complete AnalysesI turn the page of the day, writing what I'm told by the motion of your eyelashes. I enter you, the truthfulness of the dark. I want proofs of darkness, want to drink the black wine: take my eyes and crush them. A drop of night on your breast's tip: mysteries of the carnation. Closing my eyes I open them inside your eyes. Always awake on its garnet bed: your wet tongue. There are fountains in the garden of your veins. With a mask of blood I cross your thoughts blankly: amnesia guides me to the other side of life.
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