"You don't question what you believe, but I must."How far we have come from March 415!They won't stone us or burn us at the stake now,Flay our skin with broken bits of pottery.That was over a hundred years ago. No wait, fifty --Or was it perhaps twenty?Definitely at least ten years ago.Or was it two?Doesn't matter. Time is of no consequence.It is not for you.Today's special is slut-shamingBold red on the multi cuisine menu.It was much in demand yesterday too.Yesterday's special was slut-shaming -It's an everyday specialLeast expensive meal on the tattered, dog-eared menu.
I will remove all memories of youBurn the cruel pictures, every one.Seeing you locked in a frozen imageRemembering youRemembering your momentRemembering and realizingThere could never have been another.Thin lacerations like fine brush-strokesFrom another lifetimeFast disappearing from my naked wristsAre the last of your claim.The world too full of feral maliceAnd you, loved enough not to knowYou who have left as quietly as you cameYour kind leaves long before we doHealing and bruising
Jolt of market-carts ;Steady drip of horses' hoofs on hard pavement ;A black sky lacquered over with blueness,And the lights of Battersea BridgePricking pale in the dawn.The beautiful hours are passingAnd still you sleep !Tired heart of my joy.Incurved upon your dreams.Will the day come before you have opened to me ?
Is it indeed so? If I lay here dead,Wouldst thou miss any life in losing mine?And would the sun for thee more coldly shineBecause of grave-damps falling round my head?I marvelled, my Beloved, when I readThy thought so in the letter. I am thine—But . . . so much to thee? Can I pour thy wineWhile my hands tremble ? Then my soul, insteadOf dreams of death, resumes life's lower range.Then, love me, Love! look on me—breathe on me!As brighter ladies do not count it strange,For love, to give up acres and degree,I yield the grave for thy sake, and exchangeMy near sweet view of Heaven, for earth with thee!
I pant for the music which is divine,My heart in its thirst is a dying flower;Pour forth the sound like enchanted wine,Loosen the notes in a silver shower;Like a herbless plain, for the gentle rain,I gasp, I faint, till they wake again.Let me drink of the spirit of that sweet sound,More, oh more,--I am thirsting yet;It loosens the serpent which care has boundUpon my heart to stifle it;The dissolving strain, through every vein,Passes into my heart and brain.As the scent of a violet withered up,Which grew by the brink of a silver lake,When the hot noon has drained its dewy cup,And mist there was none its thirst to slake--