Infatuation & Crushes

Colors passing through us

Purple as tulips in May, mauve
into lush velvet, purple
as the stain blackberries leave
on the lips, on the hands,
the purple of ripe grapes
sunlit and warm as flesh.

Every day I will give you a color,
like a new flower in a bud vase
on your desk. Every day
I will paint you, as women
color each other with henna
on hands and on feet.

Mme. Sperides

Perhaps her cook, come under the influence
Of a few discreet piastres, had spoken
Too indiscreetly. Or just perhaps,
On a hot day along the azure of the Mediterranean,
Rue Fouad bearing a stream of traffic
To Muhammed Ali Square in a riot
Of klaxons and shouts, and the whole city
Gleaming white as it must have from a distance,

Cozy Apologia

I could pick anything and think of you —
This lamp, the wind-still rain, the glossy blue
My pen exudes, drying matte, upon the page.
I could choose any hero, any cause or age
And, sure as shooting arrows to the heart,
Astride a dappled mare, legs braced as far apart
As standing in silver stirrups will allow —

sweet reader, flanneled and tulled

Reader unmov’ d and Reader unshaken, Reader unseduc’ d
and unterrified, through the long-loud and the sweet-still
I creep toward you. Toward you, I thistle and I climb.

I crawl, Reader, servile and cervine, through this blank
season, counting — I sleep and I sleep. I sleep,
Reader, toward you, loud as a cloud and deaf, Reader, deaf

Orpheus

He glanced around to check if the treacherous gods
had really given him the reward promised for his accomplished song
and there she was, Eurydice restored, perfectly naked and fleshed
in her rhyming body again, the upper and lower smiles and eyes,
the line of mouth-sternum-navel-cleft, the chime of breasts and hips
and of the two knees, the feet, the toes, and that expression
of an unimaginable intelligence that yoked all these with a skill
she herself had forgotten the learning of: there she was, with him

If Briefly

Sometimes in time’ s near
unassailable sangfroid there is
a thawing
& the memory
asserts its musicality again

reminds one that it is at heart
heart’ s artificer

* * *

Somewhere in Okinawa there are stairs

“My husband is the only
constant in”

are concrete stairs that lead one
(or at least led me, age six)
near straight from top to bottom of a cliff face
& they ended in a black-sand beach

My life’s delight

Come, O come, my life’s delight,
Let me not in languor pine!
Love loves no delay; thy sight,
The more enjoyed, the more divine:
O come, and take from me
The pain of being deprived of thee!

Thou all sweetness dost enclose,
Like a little world of bliss.
Beauty guards thy looks: the rose
In them pure and eternal is.
Come, then, and make thy flight
As swift to me, as heavenly light.

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