The Bargain

1957 –

In the transatlantic fury
when I feared
I might not survive
to see Florence,
clutching an elfin
Love Sonnets of Shakespeare,
I implored:
Lord, let me live
long enough to dare
a love poem—

In time, of course, the skies
stopped glowering.
And in the Tuscan summer’s imperial
segue into autumn,
poetry burgeoned—

It’s not only the active grace,
the glory between us:
these praise songs spring
from a holy bargain,
from my deepest desire
to live.

Corsair

Remember, every lover is a corsair seeking glory,
An x-marks-the-spot, a longing for invisible treasure,

Every lover is an end-point and a start-point
In the history of the world, a spark in the bright flare

Of the possible. Our swashbuckling lovers remind us:
Once we were lazing children,

Cyrus Cassells

Brian Turner

2023

A Great Beauty

And when her son never returned
from the meant-to-crush-him camps,

the crucible of Poland,
always-hard-at-work Isa slept

for endless hours,
and once, under her lids, she was led,

by diligent female Virgils,
to a vast meadow

where an inspirited Isa embraced,
one by one,

countless women who remained
in mourning for their cherished sons.

Gallant and stricken,
together the myriad bereaved

but defiant women formed
an ever-widening circle,

Cyrus Cassells

2012

Jasmine

These are the days of jasmine in Rome
when headlong, emboldened April has dissolved,

and the joyous braiding of sun and rain
brings this sweet, steady broadcast;

when I step from the suppertime train,
that’s what greets me:

Roman hedges and walkways,
graffiti-laden precincts graced

with pallid fireworks, so even
the most tumbledown niches seem

breeze-swept,
festive now with fragrance

Jasmine the elating moment’s shibboleth,
the cool, enrapturing night’s cavalry

Cyrus Cassells

2018

Poems

The Bargain

More by this poet

Corsair

A Great Beauty

Jasmine

Poems

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The Bargain

More by this poet

Corsair

A Great Beauty

Jasmine

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