A Poem of Love in Eleven Lines

A
Dreamer of purified fury and fabulous habit,
your eyes of deserted white afternoons
target, stiffen, riot with unicorn candor
so I swallow your body like meanings or whisky or as you swallow me.

Break rhythm here: your kiss is my justice:
look then now how orange blooms of jubilation unfold in satisfied air!
This sex is more than sex, under the will of the god of sex,
so I softly invoke transformation of your rueful image of haven
–those frozen rocks, that guilty lighthouse isolate from temptation–
to warm Flemish landscape green and brighteyed with daisies of
dizzying color
where pilgrims are dancing after gospelling bird who sing of
new springs, good water.

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V
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60
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61
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from “An Attempt at Jealousy” by Marina Tsvetaeva
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From Maud: O that 'twere possible by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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To find the arms of my true love
Round me once again!...

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Ah, Christ! that it were possible
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Here, where the world is quiet;
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;
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For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest-time and mowing,
A sleepy world of streams.

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And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter
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I am weary of days and hours,
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from The Testament of John Lydgate by John Lydgate
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Beholde, o man! lyft up thyn eye and see
What mortall peyne I suffre for thi trespace.
With pietous voys I crye and sey to the:
Beholde my woundes, behold my blody face,
Beholde the rebukes that do me so manace,
Beholde my enemyes that do me so despice,
And how that I, to reforme the to grace,
Was like a lambe offred in sacryfice.

...

And geyn thi pryde behold my gret mekenesse;
Geyn thyn envie behold my charité;
Geyn thi leccherye behold my chast clennesse;
Geyn thi covetyse behold my poverté.
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