I value nothing
more than error
desire life before
the service of courage
the old must suspect
that the mad motions of the heart
serve no purpose
but love or hatching
the sudden motion of a cellar door
long kept locked
and half the wine drunk
as a remedy
is my knee red
which hand is handsome
alone with each other
we begin to learn to dance
for two to pray
being one is holy
a couple of ducks content to eat
in the cold wind
this ache is my Valentine
the beauty of her naked neck
I admire it as we eat
she loves horses
and I am in pain from riding
I have lived
a very orderly life
a cook may find my heart
too old and hard
a most troublesome fellow my head
aching to have the world
and knot it up
seeing all the disorder of desire
as a wing for love
We dance
on one leg
and dine together on a tongue.
Who is going to lay up
a box of rich things?
Who is enlarging his horse?
We walk
on glass stairs
to sudden fortune or to love
and make the best stories,
the most pleasant stories—
how on such
a night as this
she and I found some trivial business
and took occasion
to go to bed.
I walk up
and down and miss
everything that passes:
love
and water
and her troubled mind.
The treaties
which made me laugh.
I eat out of the pot
his gold-laced suit still
on my mind
The dog all afternoon
is master of the yard.
I play with
his trust, troubled
by love as art.
“Time enough” is a cheat;
we make good sport
of losing. Give me
the passing of things: heart
breaking in the opera,
a love done
after a little sin.
Here, my love, is
that rare vision,
how to buy ease of mind:
a hamper of melons.
For love and quiet
we took a mouthful of age,
a single night
and the noise of rain.
And between waking
and sleeping, never had
so much content.