In life there is no pleasure
To love and youth unknown,
For love is life’s one treasure,
And love and life are one.

In youth there is one sorrow
To love and life well known,
For beauty fades to-morrow
When youth from love has flown.

But love is like the shower
That waters gardens dry,
And brings to earth a flower
That blooms, but cannot die.

It’s neither red
nor sweet.
It doesn’t melt
or turn over,
break or harden,
so it can’t feel
pain,
yearning,
regret.

It doesn’t have 
a tip to spin on,
it isn’t even
shapely—
just a thick clutch
of muscle,
lopsided,
mute. Still,
I feel it inside
its cage sounding
a dull tattoo:
I want, I want—

but I can’t open it:
there’s no key.
I can’t wear it
on my sleeve,
or tell you from
the bottom of it
how I feel. Here,
it’s all yours, now—
but you’ll have
to take me,
too.

Love is easier the headless way
what good is desire in a world
where there is only a thriving darkness

Your mouth is a gate
opening to any place away from here––
the crumbling mansion of my nothing heart

With this form-fitting cloth
                                      I do wed

Let us spill into one another
like waves of agitated milk
Placing our thoughts elsewhere
               onto unavailable others
while our useless arms
disappear into what frames us:

bench / bed / brothel of the mind

Everywhere we turn
winter remains unfinished

You don’t trust your mouth
and I don’t trust anyone
who says they love me

What are we willing to emotionally
barter for when all we have
is the simple meat of ourselves

And who can say what color the world
was before the earth’s canvas
began flowering paint.

                                           I have this recurring dream

where we live nameless as mushrooms
in the shadow of primeval birds––
birds who eluded ornithologists
and didn’t want the press

But who agreed to soar forever
without landing
and seed the earth with minerals of light.
I awake, usually, in a choking grief.

How we’ve agreed to love one another
without ever opening our eyes.

You are not me, and I am never you
except for thirty seconds in a year
when ecstasy of coming,
laughing at the same time
or being cruel to know for certain
what the other's feeling
charge some recognition.

Not often when we talk though.
Undressing to the daily logs
of this petty boss, that compliment,
curling our lips at half-announced ambitions.

I tell you this during another night
of living next to you
without having said what was on our minds,
our bodies merely rubbing their fishy smells together.

The feelings keep piling up.
Will I ever find the time to tell you what is inside these trunks?

Maybe it's the fault of our language
but dreams are innocent and pictorial.
Then let our dreams speak for us
side by side, leg over leg,
an electroencephalographic kiss
flashing blue movies from temple
to temple, as we lie gagged in sleep.

Sleep on while I am talking
I am just arranging the curtains
over your naked breasts.
Love doesn't look too closely...
love looks very closely
the shock of beauty you gave me
the third rail that runs through our hospitality.
When will I follow you
over the fence to your tracks?

You are not beautiful, exactly.
You are beautiful, inexactly.
You let a weed grow by the mulberry
and a mulberry grow by the house.
So close, in the personal quiet
of a windy night, it brushes the wall
and sweeps away the day till we sleep.

A child said it, and it seemed true:
“Things that are lost are all equal.”
But it isn’t true. If I lost you,
the air wouldn’t move, nor the tree grow.
Someone would pull the weed, my flower.
The quiet wouldn’t be yours. If I lost you,
I’d have to ask the grass to let me sleep.

since feeling is first
who pays any attention 
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate 
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

Under all beauty that I know,
All vital dreams,
Sharp loveliness,
Under the hair, the lips of laughter,
The dusk-dim eyes of pain,
Lurks the single thing I fear,
Hard-mouthed, implacable-eyed,
The monster,
The satyr-thing, futility.

I cannot look on loveliness
Or burn the flame of ecstasy,
Or even dream for very long,
Without the annihilating fear
That it will suddenly tear some veil
And bare its dreadful face.

When I am light with the exaltation
Mysteriously born of worship,
Filled like a cup with the wine of wonder
At some great cloudy bloom of color,
Or learning the infinite secrets of rapture
With bared heart held to love’s lips—
Light’s eyes are suddenly blinded,
Life gropes in empty twilight,
And the mocking mouth of the satyr-thing
Leers at me from a veil of dust.

Shuddering I crouch to earth,
Trembling lest it come more near,
Trembling lest it stretch a hand
And touch me! Choked by an agony
Of horror lest its deadly eyes
Should shrivel my flaming heart of dream.
Sometimes I think the universe,
Mind, passion, beauty, wisdom, light,
All fathomless life-wonders,
Serve only for its cloak.

It lurks like death in everything
That has a singing heart:
In all exultant voices,
In all desire’s burning eyes,
In youth’s true soul,
In love’s slim hands,

Sometimes I think it is life’s core,
This mocking-mouth’d implacable ghost.
Sometimes I think it is life’s core.
Sometimes I think it must be God.

I am sweetly perplexed by love sallies, releases,
By the countless retreats and the numberless captures,
By the petulant coldness and agreeable raptures,
By the whisper of phrases that hurts and then pleases,
I am drunk by the prodigal total of leases
From her body and spirit, her soul and her senses,
I revel in approaches and artless offenses,
In her challenging taunts and her tenderly teases.
Now will I disengage a red flower from her tresses,
And uplift her lithe form from a divan of roses,
For the zephyr of night too much passion opposes,
And in delicate folds now has rumpled her dresses.
On tomorrow’s new ventures the heart eager presses,
I repose now to ponder on life-soothing losses.

Then said Almitra, Speak to us of Love.
     And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them. And with a great voice he said:
     When love beckons to you, follow him,
     Though his ways are hard and steep.
     And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
     Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
     And when he speaks to you believe in him,
     Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

     For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
     Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
     So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
     Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself
     He threshes you to make your naked.
     He sifts you to free you from your husks.
     He grinds you to whiteness.
     He kneads you until you are pliant;
     And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.

     All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.

     But if in your heart you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure,
     Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor,
     Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
     Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
     Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
     For love is sufficient unto love.

     When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am in the heart of God.”
     And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

     Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
     But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
     To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
     To know the pain of too much tenderness.
     To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
     And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
     To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
     To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
     To return home at eventide with gratitude;
     And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.