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Sara Teasdale
We walked in the dew, in the drowsy starlight
To the sleepless, sleepy sound
Of insects singing in the low sea-meadows
For miles and miles around;
With a wheel and a whirr the resistless rhythm
Trembled incessantly;
Antares was red in the sky before us,
And behind us, the blackness of the sea.
Stretching from your nipple
to infinity,
planets orbit the heavens.
Like a planetarium
above the bed the skylight
frames the reality of you
lying naked, now
and starlight hurling
the past against walled shadows.
Searching sky's dark well
we lie together
waiting for the future.
Afternoon sunlight limps tenuously away,
Leaving a snarled retrospect of golden foot-marks.
The sea is pregnant with gracious discords
That falteringly shroud the sleep-rhythmed breasts of winds.
The sky is a genially vacant stare.
Remaining touches of starlight
Tremble the leaves when air is still....
And so my love for you strolls through this day,
Picking up forgotten hints of its heart.
Your head is steel cut into drooping lines
That make a mask satirically meek:
Your face is like a tired devil weak
From drinking many vague and unsought wines.
The sullen skepticism of your eyes
For ever trying to transcend itself,
Is often entered by a wistful elf
Who sits naïvely unperturbed and wise.
And this same remnant, with its youthful wiles
Held curiously apart from blasphemies,
Twirls starlight shivers out upon your sneers
And changes them to little, startled smiles.
And all your insolence drops to its knees
Before the half-won grandeur of past years.
Were you a leper bathed in wounds
And by the world denied,
I’d share your fatal exile
As a privilege, with pride.
You are the very sun, the moon,
The starlight of my soul,
The sounding motif of my heart
Its impetus and goal!