You arrived like an odd insect
That, upon extending its wings,
Belongs to all yet to no one in particular.
The grapevine beetle knows
That its time was summer and locusts,
And that before that sweltering heat and that music
Life is a bale of hay, darkness, and a thin membrane.
It recognizes a purple shell wherein
The female, quietly lurking,
Yearns to be fire and fruit.
That summer of nineteen hundred and something,
I withstood the calumny of my life
Like an emblem of molten silver,
Without shade, but rich in fruit so sweet
That milk and honey were nothing.
Milk, honey, streams
Each time the moon is ripe
I scoop blue water from the lake
store it in preserve jars
its magic pressed to my ear.
On nights like this I
spill some in your whiskey
smile at your eyes, bright
moist lips, and think,
This could be the night.
Later at dawn we watch the moon
curl down the sky, the lake
pull back from the shore.
She asked me
to play something
sweet and holy.
I took the
quivering reed
between my lips
and pressed greensleeves
against her dress,
the gold saxophone,
mother of pearl keys,
her breasts rising
falling in prayer.
Come to me
before the dawn
dims the stars.
The same wave
that washes
the clouds
moves in your
fluttering breath.
Let me see the
play of shadows
on your breasts.
Let me part the rose
that roots
in your heart.
Let me bathe
in the warm sound
I have licked
the salt stone.
Run mad
as a mushroom cap
bobbing in the rapids
of a dark stream.
Leapt up
the oak ladder
to circle the
crescent moon.
The wind
lies languid
in the ivory caves
of your
morning
mouth.
You move
like a winter tide
rolling on a belly
of sand.
Swirling over me,
fondling
the broken shells
of my sighs.
Lick my skin
with salt
and silt
before I
die.
Bright rising curves,
disco ball glistens on a setting sun.
The Shape is hidden under warm, wet fur.
We are only bodies in transit,
skin to skin.
Filthy, sweating:
involuntary rapture.
A brief sinless violence
Falling to exhaustion.
Dwarfed by black yews
you pirouette, a ruby shadow
in green arabesque fern.
Twirling like an autumn leaf
you dance in the shade
for a flute of birds.
Beneath a quilt of fern
your breasts bud and flower
I glimpse the wind.
Turn me to my yellow leaves,
I am better satisfied;
There is something in me grieves--
That was never born, and died.
Let me be a scarlet flame
On a windy autumn morn,
I who never had a name,
Nor from breathing image born.
From the margin let me fall
Where the farthest stars sink down,
And the void consumes me,--all
In nothingness to drown.
Let me dream my dream entire,
Withered as an autumn leaf--
Let me have my vain desire,
Vain--as it is brief.
I thought no more was needed
Youth to prolong
Than dumb-bell and foil
To keep the body young.
Oh, who could have foretold
That the heart grows old?
Though I have many words,
What woman's satisfied,
I am no longer faint
Because at her side?
Oh, who could have foretold
That the heart grows old?
I have not lost desire
But the heart that I had,
I thought 'twould burn my body
Laid on the death-bed.
Breathes there a man with hide so tough
Who says two sexes aren't enough?
Pain is a country cousin of yours.
He flings buds of awakening desires
Upon the stately weddings in your heart,
And laughs.
You must teach him better manners;
Bind his mouth with pale sleep;
Caress him with trailing hands
That loosen the buds he has stolen, into flowers.