Love me little, love me long,
Is the burden of my song.
Love that is too hot and strong
Burneth soon to waste:
Still, I would not have thee cold,
Not too backward, nor too bold;
Love that lasteth till ’ tis old
Fadeth not in haste.
Love me little, love me long,
Is the burden of my song.
We are descending again in parallel —
I cannot say together — as in another dream
you rushed through the first door
without me. It was late. Your name
was an elevator door resisting its rail,
its screech my only attempt to reach you.
Was it the hurt that filled the elevator
I entered with gurneys and gowned girls,
incubated hearts pumping for a home?
Floors flicker as they fall.
The girls’ chatter flaps shrill at light,
tangles in my hair and away
The skyscrapers of New York will never know the coolness that comes down on Kifisia
but when I see the two cypress trees above your familiar church
with the paintings of the damned being tortured in fire and brimstone
then I recall the two chimneys behind the cedars I used to like so much when I was abroad.
When the man behind the counter said, “You pay
by the orifice,” what could we do but purchase them all?
Ah, Sandy, you were clearly the deluxe doll, modish and pert
in your plastic nurse whites, official hostess to our halcyon days,
where you bobbed in the doorway of our dishabille apartment,
a block downwind from the stockyards. Holding court on
the corroded balcony, K. and I passed hash brownies, collecting
change for the building’ s monthly pool to predict which balcony
It is half past ten in Stonington.
The trees droop apprehensive of the heat
And the sky has turned that pale suspicious colour
That means that it cannot support more light.
Here on the terrace I and a companion
Each pretends to read. The papers say
That it is 90 in New York today.
In my heart the old love
Struggled with the new,
It was ghostly waking
All night through.
Dear things, kind things
That my old love said,
Ranged themselves reproachfully
Round my bed.
Up late watching slug porn, you confess
you had a boyfriend who could spin you
like that, slug grace and slug ballet — we don’ t
touch the topic of slime — and those eyes
dangling from tentacle tips must be a
kind of love or lust, sighting farther and
nearer all at once. (But are those eyes?)
Slug sublimity suggests love’ s a drag,
touch that lingers and leaves a wet trail of
memory and... What did we do before
YouTube? Boob tube. Boobs we have none; slugs,
of course, don’ t care, can’ t tell girl from boy,
scent of myrrh on the handles
when oil is in the lock
silken is his mouth
when he is hard upon me
young heart, green bed,
his fingers are in the stream
he eats of the bitter honey
the sweetness of cherry
sacrament of the blood
and of its winding
sacrament of arrival
and of its binding
Off rows of windshields
in the Amtrak lot
rain in sudden
clumps like jacks. Parked cars
with people in them
awaiting people they imagine
hurtling through suburbs
of silver woods
awaiting them. True
love needs interference,
a certain blizzard distance,
for the words to worm through.
Remember Iowa?
August storms that would self-spark
as if our fights could trip
the finest wire beneath the sidewalk.
And the sunlight, harder after.
I
