To the woman who gives herself to the man Poem by Eugène Savitzkaya

To the woman who gives herself to the man, to the teeth
that have crunched the lettuce and the beans, to the fist
of the woman who grasped the agate, the hankie crushed
like a rose, to the belly engorged with rust-red blood,
to the umbilical tied up in a neat sailor's knot,
to the fingers that have held a trotter of pork
or the father's thumb kept secret in a box
the shape of a prism at the bottom of a hole the shape of a funnel
to the man who gives himself to the woman, to the lips
scalded from eating chestnuts in the open air,
to the man's sternum, hard and soft, to the belly
engorged with rust-red blood, the umbilical tied up
in a neat sailor's knot, to the fingers that have weighed
the dung and the tresses of a mother still living,
on her way on a journey in history
and kept secret, in a forest of birch.