Our love is the seed
we scatter on fields of feeling
to develop like rows of seedlings
or into trees
and quickly give fruit.
*
In love, I let her breasts
curl around poetry till the words
string a necklace on the chest of beauty
so she might rise like the moon.
*
From love she complains to you about my self-confidence
the day she melted from the heat of her tidal surge or
did she know that distance makes men lie
down at the corners of desire, no more
or no less.
*
Our love is an arthritic pain eroding drowsiness
from the bodies on a bed of sleep.
No sleep keeps up with us, no
insomnia despised.
*
Our love made words go down our throats
as if we were mute.
Their ringing quiet is rent
by the silence of love poetry.
What’s strange is its (meaning silence’s)
voice has just described union.
*
A love raised between us loved us.
Living together was enough for us to become three
in a boat whose helmsman was impulse
or galloping imagination.
*
Her lover before me has the luck of a winner
since he saw her lover after me wasting his time
erasing a thousand poems inscribed
on a magnificent body beneath him
stamped by one from the caste of heroes.
*
Love of ours, treat us tenderly
enclose your fields full of joy.
Jealousy may slip over the fence
and steal the time reserved for a kiss while we hunt it down.
It may not split us up but
might delay a moment that has barely arrived.
*
If her love had realised the gains of my rich poems
it would have asked me for a little renewed fame
or would have swapped me for an artist to share the spoils
by signing his painting ‘Love’.
But in spite of this I remain honest and decent
not called a plagiarist.
*
That accursed love of hers has driven me mad
it tricks me with a day as sweet as honey
and another nothing but raw onion.
I am the sniper who makes the birds gulp in fear
except for her whose beauty skirmished with the crosshairs
as did the partridge. I swear
the partridge is crafty.
we scatter on fields of feeling
to develop like rows of seedlings
or into trees
and quickly give fruit.
*
In love, I let her breasts
curl around poetry till the words
string a necklace on the chest of beauty
so she might rise like the moon.
*
From love she complains to you about my self-confidence
the day she melted from the heat of her tidal surge or
did she know that distance makes men lie
down at the corners of desire, no more
or no less.
*
Our love is an arthritic pain eroding drowsiness
from the bodies on a bed of sleep.
No sleep keeps up with us, no
insomnia despised.
*
Our love made words go down our throats
as if we were mute.
Their ringing quiet is rent
by the silence of love poetry.
What’s strange is its (meaning silence’s)
voice has just described union.
*
A love raised between us loved us.
Living together was enough for us to become three
in a boat whose helmsman was impulse
or galloping imagination.
*
Her lover before me has the luck of a winner
since he saw her lover after me wasting his time
erasing a thousand poems inscribed
on a magnificent body beneath him
stamped by one from the caste of heroes.
*
Love of ours, treat us tenderly
enclose your fields full of joy.
Jealousy may slip over the fence
and steal the time reserved for a kiss while we hunt it down.
It may not split us up but
might delay a moment that has barely arrived.
*
If her love had realised the gains of my rich poems
it would have asked me for a little renewed fame
or would have swapped me for an artist to share the spoils
by signing his painting ‘Love’.
But in spite of this I remain honest and decent
not called a plagiarist.
*
That accursed love of hers has driven me mad
it tricks me with a day as sweet as honey
and another nothing but raw onion.
I am the sniper who makes the birds gulp in fear
except for her whose beauty skirmished with the crosshairs
as did the partridge. I swear
the partridge is crafty.