STILL STRANGERS:

     EROS

IN EROSION



After years

     of wear, she would sew

with those sharp dead

                           beads, new thoughts

           into the threadbare pattern of memory,

and he solder

       his older, darker, thoughts into place….






… Long ago…





they learned to slaughter

        their eager laughter and tear

                         their deepest tears out of each’s other,

they taught themselves to utilize their exquisite words

                      like hamhamhammers and broadswords--

then, their mutual wounds

                     they wound all about their lives like poison ivy.

(Each just one more bothersome

              clone to the other…)



But



There had been a time



, once,



before the tiny

            mutiny,

when they were still strangers

                                 to anger,

when they could lie naked,

                          sun-baked upon the jurassic sands

or beside the slow hearth,

                            unearthing new treasures from their together,

when, in some safe

                        cafe, their yes

                                      -eyes could swallow entire

their sweet menus

               of Venus

and for many an hour

                           pour their love

from lip to mouth like milk from a pitcher to a glass.





But that time passed…





Strangely

     angel-like, two

 naif

waifs

blown

 down,

unable to unwind all the ivy accumulation

 in a rugged wind – they just

     shrugged, unable to face down

     the demons of their facetious selves.



             (This is not simply

                             to imply that they weren’t determined.

But, over time, stubborn assiduity becomes undermined,

especially when connubial cement lacks

                                 reinforcement.

So, by fragile grapevines, over

                tangled ravines,

the values they were hanging onto

                        kept changing.

They were unable to forge a structure anew

                         or to forget old collapse.

 Neither the heights of their dear science nor

             the weight of alerted conscience,

and not Keats, and certainly

       not Yeats,

     could keep the crevices in their isolate selves

from inventing the devices of their together’s undoing.)







                              Beached,

they discovered the sea:

     inequal parts nausea and mystery.



MAGNIFYING GLASS



You are that lens

that focuses that passion

that assembles

that clearing conflagration.



Borders are kept

by habit, time, or treaty.

When virgin lands

are opened to new seeding

planters supplant

foragers, and old hunters

confront lightnings

to experience thunder.



Our species needs union for generation

but it splits to get searchlight approbation.



HER NAME IS JENNY AND MANY A MORN HAS SEEN HER FACE



:daybreaks are harlots all scarlet and huge with rouge and paste.

:some skies all rosy with hosiery (her limbs so prim, so chaste).

:some days hemorrhage like courage at our battleplace.

:other sunrises are sizes too large – whole yards of lace:

silk towns are pretty but cities of silk go wilt and waste.

(So like my Jenny: her any is much; her touch, embrace.)

(There is no middle. A little with her will work long ways.

:brown coffee mornings come pouring right up from cup to taste.

:all these sunrisings (dawn-icings) – like thieves, they leave no trace.

(So unlike Jenny:

so many a morn has worn her face, so many evenings.

Her leaving goes dim with flimsy haste.)



MONUMENT/MYTH



1. LA FONTAINE MÉDICIS, JARDIN DU LUXEMBOURG



You stroke the stonework

when you come upon the cyclops

and, so, I fountain.



2. ACIS



The bent bronze was crouched.

Your love urged blood into water

and so I fountained.



LOVERS PREFER ROMANCE BECAUSE



poets seek to explore “la mer’

while disregarding the isthmus

and when ‘st-stanzas st-stutter

they p-pretend ma-melisma.