You are not male or female, but a plan deep-set within the heart of man. - Marianne Moore

You're not free until you've been made captive by / supreme belief.

TO A GIRAFFE
If it is unpermissible, in fact fatal
to be personal and undesirable
to be literal — detrimental as well
if the eye is not innocent-does it mean that
one can live only on top leaves that are small
reachable only by a beast that is tall? — of which the giraffe is the best example — the unconversational animal.
When plagued by the psychological,
a creature can be unbearable
that could have been irresistible;
or to be exact, exceptional
since less conversational
than some emotionally-tied-in-knots animal.
After all
consolations of the metaphysical
can be profound. In Homer, existence
is flawed; transcendence, conditional;
“the journey from sin to redemption, perpetual.

So wary as to disappear for centuries and reappear but never caught, the unicorn has been preserved by an unmatched device wrought like the work of expert blacksmiths ...