Romantic Love

XII

Back from Istanbul, she gives to me
the photograph she took inside
the Archaeological Museum’ s
blue tiled hush, of a tablet
carved in terra cotta from Nippur,
written in Sumerian.

Even if you didn’ t have green eyes (in the bathtub, blue).
Even if you didn’ t have a lovely singing voice,
or care for Alexandrine champagne
some slow Saturday evenings to sing it through,
it pleases me, your lips close to my ear,
or when you’ re a big girl, and I’ m a big girl too.

All my stories are about being left,
all yours about leaving. So we should have known.
Should have known to leave well enough alone;
we knew, and we didn’ t. You said let’ s put
our cards on the table, your card
was your body, the table my bed, where we didn’ t
get till 4 am, so tired from wanting
what we shouldn’ t that when we finally found our heads,
we’ d lost our minds. Love, I wanted to call you
so fast. But so slow you could taste each
letter licked into your particular and rose-like ear.

You wept in your mother's arms
and I knew that from then on
I was to forget myself.

The twilight of your face,
the unknown bird in your voice,
draws me again to your eyes’ green vision,

your song about that longest
moment, a moon vulnerability,
a Natalie I saw alone,

at Carolyn’ s party years ago,
where you called me to your side,
and I held my heart, cupped in shadow,

as an offering to your smile,
our soft-spoken isolation.

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.

There is a garden in her face
Where roses and white lilies blow;
A heavenly paradise is that place,
Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow:
There cherries grow which none may buy
Till “Cherry-ripe” themselves do cry.

Those cherries fairly do enclose
Of orient pearl a double row,
Which when her lovely laughter shows,
They look like rose-buds filled with snow;
Yet them no peer nor prince can buy
Till “Cherry-ripe” themselves do cry.

I care not for these ladies,
That must be wooed and prayed:
Give me kind Amaryllis,
The wanton country maid.
Nature art disdaineth,
Her beauty is her own.
Her when we court and kiss,
She cries, “Forsooth, let go! ”
But when we come where comfort is,
She never will say no.