Her Festival Clothes

They become strange, forget/the ties that bound them to/a familiar world, forget their/underwear, their brassieres, their/bodies/demanding comfort now, after the/fierce holding of appearances, family,/all the animate world, on course:/pilots who must navigate over/mountain ridges, vast oceans./At last they furl their sails, /undo the lines. Their bodies /lose shape, their skin shrivels, they moor themselves to the walls /of small rooms, appear to sleep. /Sometimes in the dark, their bodies shiver, the slight motion /of a chrysalis in winter.