If we took from your silk throat Your garnet-studded black velvet band, What would we find? If we unwreathed from your wrist The silver bracelets it affections, What would we see? If we plucked from your hair The ring of rosebuds that crowns it, Would they be thorned? If we looked at your arms, at your legs - Are they bejeweled with henna or with scars? And are those scars of a child's falls Or of the screams we never heard? Are you marked with wounds of antiquity Or with wounds of the recent past - With wounds of a helpless tree Or wounds of your own sharp knife? And those love marks on your throat Are they signs of love or of pain? Is your throat unblemished beneath your velvet band Or does it show the traces of a failed bid to die? Does your scalp bleed from its crown of thorns Placed there by one who loved you? Is your skin unblemished, soft and white, Or is it slashed with marks of pain? Is it the silence of a life Or does it scream with a darken'd heart? Shall we look on you naked and sigh with pleasure Or weep at the pain printed on you? Or are those screams the memories Of the gilded whip he raised on you Which you welcomed as it tore your flesh And marked you as his love?