^{Translated from the Spanish by Mason Carnes}

When sleep folds his gauzy wings
Over you at dead of night,
And your eye-lashes fast-closed
Look like bows of ebony;
Then to listen to your heart
Throbbing in a sweet unrest
And to lean your sleeping head
On my breast, I’d give, my soul,
All I own—light, air and thought!

When your eyes look far away
At something invisible,
And the reflex of a smile
Darts, illumining your lips;
Then to read upon your brow
Silent thoughts, that pass like clouds
O’er a glass, I’d give, my soul,
All I wish—fame, genius, gold!

When words die upon your lips,
And your breath comes quick and warm,
And your cheeks are all aglow
And your black eyes look in mine;
Then to see in them a spark,
Flashing with a humid fire,
As it gushes from the heart,
I would give, soul of my soul,
All that is and all to come!

Now I am all
One bowl of kisses,
Such as the tall
Slim votaresses
Of Egypt filled
For a God’s excesses.

I lift to you
My bowl of kisses,
And through the temple’s
Blue recesses
Cry out to you
In wild caresses.

And to my lips’
Bright crimson rim
The passion slips,
And down my slim
White body drips
The shining hymn.

And still before
The altar I
Exult the bowl
Brimful, and cry
To you to stoop
And drink, Most High.

Oh drink me up
That I may be
Within your cup
Like a mystery,
Like wine that is still
In ecstasy.

Glimmering still
In ecstasy,
Commingled wines
Of you and me
In one fulfill
The mystery.

 
At the touch of you,	
As if you were an archer with your swift hand at the bow,	
The arrows of delight shot through my body.	
 
You were spring,	
And I the edge of a cliff,
And a shining waterfall rushed over me. 

    I think about your sex.
My heart simplified, I think about your sex,
before the ripe daughterloin of day.
I touch the bud of joy, it is in season.
And an ancient sentiment dies
degenerated into brains.

    I think about your sex, furrow more prolific
and harmonious than the belly of the Shadow,
though Death conceives and bears
from God himself.
Oh Conscience,
I am thinking, yes, about the free beast
who takes pleasure where he wants, where he can.

    Oh, scandal of the honey of twilights.
Oh mute thunder.

    Rednuhtetum!

Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight:
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
        All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
        To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

The elephant, the huge old beast,
     is slow to mate;
he finds a female, they show no haste
     they wait

for the sympathy in their vast shy hearts
     slowly, slowly to rouse
as they loiter along the river-beds
     and drink and browse

and dash in panic through the brake
     of forest with the herd,
and sleep in massive silence, and wake
     together, without a word.

So slowly the great hot elephant hearts
     grow full of desire,
and the great beasts mate in secret at last,
     hiding their fire.

Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts
     so they know at last
how to wait for the loneliest of feasts
     for the full repast.

They do not snatch, they do not tear;
     their massive blood
moves as the moon-tides, near, more near
     till they touch in flood.

The moon assumes her voyeuristic perch
to find the rut of me, releashed from sense,
devoid of focus ’cept by your design.
I never thought restraint would be my thing.
Then you: the hole from which my logic seeps,
who bucks my mind’s incessant swallowsong
& pins the speaker’s squirming lyric down
with ease. You coax a measured flood, decide
the scatter of my breath & know your place—
astride the August heat, your knuckles tight
around a bratty vers, a fuschia gag:
you quiet my neurotic ass, can still
the loudness murmuring beneath my skull.
Be done. There’s nothing more to say.

Harder, he pants into the scruff of my neck, our labored breath
condensing as my lover pulls my hips into wolfish grind.
From a distance, we are two curs fogging a parked Chrysler,
though this, only half-accurate. In our nest, we transcend sex
-ed things, white-hot spangles like dead gods, the glow of us
pulsing brighter & brighter in turn. I have never shouted before,
but this is how he wets my nose—open, like a howl, a deafening
unhinging of worship—from the back—this, the way he whines—
throwing his head in praise. It is ancient composition, how we fever
the dark’s bones, convince the night to do our bidding.
We collapse into each other. The moon of him eclipsing
the fullness of me, the rift of us unfolding unto new darkness
& what are we but ravenous? Here, we devour dusk, suckle
sides of cosmic gristle, mouths brimming, tearing the sky, Black.

When first your glory shone upon my face
   My body kindled to a mighty flame,
And burnt you yielding in my hot embrace
   Until you swooned to love, breathing my name.

And wonder came and filled our night of sleep,
   Like a new comet crimsoning the sky;
And stillness like the stillness of the deep
   Suspended lay as an unuttered sigh.

I never again shall feel your warm heart flushed,
   Panting with passion, naked unto mine,
Until the throbbing world around is hushed
   To quiet worship at our scented shrine.

Nor will your glory seek my swarthy face,
   To kindle and to change my jaded frame
Into a miracle of godlike grace,
   Transfigured, bathed in your immortal flame.

He can’t be more than twenty-two.

And yet I’m certain it was at least that many years ago

that I enjoyed the very same body.

This isn’t some erotic fantasy.

I’ve only just come into the casino

and there hasn’t been time enough to drink.

I tell you, that’s the very same body I once enjoyed.

And if I can’t recall precisely where—that means nothing.

Now that he’s sitting there at the next table,

I recognize each of his movements—and beneath his clothes

I see those beloved, naked limbs again.

You map my cheeks in gelatinous dark, your torso 
floating, a forgotten moon, and a violin

crosses the sheets while you kiss me your mouth
of castanets. I believed once my uncles lived

in trees, from the encyclopedia I’d carried
to my father, The Philippines, the Ilongot hunting

from a branch, my father’s chin in shadows. I try
to tell you about distance, though my body

unstitches, fruit of your shoulder lit by the patio
lamp, grass of you sticky with dew, and all

our unlit places folding, one
into another. By dead night: my face in the pillow,

your knuckles in my hair, my father whipping my
back. How to lift pain from desire, the word

safety from safe, me, and the wind
chatters down gutters, rumoring

rain. I graze your stubble, lose my edges mouthing your
name. To love what we can no longer

distinguish, we paddle the other’s darkness, whisper
the bed, cry the dying violet hour; you twist

your hands of hard birches, and we peel into
our shadows, the losing of our names.