is represented in terms of an engulfment, fall or a drowning that does
not happen. At a metaphorical level, the poem explores the act of
surfacing with the imagery of a flood into which a woman awaits her
fall only to find that it does not come. Instead, a man falls at her feet
and washes away the fear with ëcareí and ëfacts about waterí so that
when she is lost at sea she can float and find her way back to dry land.
Beginning with imagery evocative of feminine flood or menstruation,
the young woman gathers her skirts as she is warned of what is to
come when she sexually comes of age. The imagery is also apoca-
lyptic and biblical, and comparable with the story of Noah and Godís
covenant that he will never again flood Earth:
Be ready for the flood, they said.
I gathered my skirts. No flood came.
Beware of the danger that comes with man
they said. I waited for the fall. (pp.60ñ62)Associated with the possibility of drowning is the fear of
suffocation as if alterity can engulf the subject of consciousness. The
man folds and wraps the woman like an Egyptian mummy and this
may suggest a suffocating relationship. Hence: ëThere is but a thin line
between care and oppression.í^33 However, in the poem, instead of
taking her over, the woman says the man ëgave me to myselfí which
suggests that he does not dominate her or try to turn the ëotherí into
the same. She says: ëhe treated me with careí yet he has ëlittle loveí:
ëHe gave me to myself, said without saying/ love if you will, but be
warned,/ I have very little.í An ambivalence is enacted semantically as
the lines could be uttered by either subject. For instance, the woman
could say: ëHe gave me to myselfí which is ësaid without sayingí and
then, addressing the man: ëlove if you will Öí. Alternatively, the
woman could say: ëHe gave me to myselfí and he ësaid without
sayingí: ëlove if you will Öí.
Zygmunt Bauman reads Levinasís philosophy of being-for-the-
ëotherí to argue that ëthe cure for loveís aporia is non-loveí.^34 Bauman
draws on Max Frisch to argue that a love that refuses to allow the
33 Zygmunt Bauman, ‘The Moral Party of Two’, Postmodern Ethics (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1993, 1994), p.92.
34 Ibid., p.95.