Anvil

The Bee

Whatever, and how fine, how fell,

Your barb my feel, my blond bee,

I've just a lacy reverie

Thrown on my tender basket's dell.

The bosom's lovely gourd sting well,

Where love lies dead or sleepily,

To bring some rosy bit of me 

To the round flesh's rebel swell!

I need so much a sharp attack:

A vivid hurt, and definite,

Is better than this sleeping rack!

So may my sense again be lit

By that slight golden warning's rise,

For without that love sleeps or dies!

Poetry

Foiled unexpectedly,

A mouth that had been feeding,

Suckled by Poetry,

Parted its down in pleading:

'O Mother Intelligence

Whose sweetness used to pour,

What is this negligence

That stops your milk once more!

'Seldom upon your breast

In the white bonds immersed

Did your goodness rest

Me on your sea-swell nursed;

'Seldom in your sky, grey

On your beauty weighed,

I felt, to drink away

The shade, a light invade!

'A god lost in his essence,

And with delight extreme,

Open to conscious presence

Of appeasement supreme,

'I touched on pure night,

Death I knew no more:

I sensed a river right 

Through me endless pour...

'Tell me through what vain dread,

Through what shadows of spite,

This marvellous vein that fed

My lips is closed off tight?

'A sign to me, harsh plight,

That I've displeased my soul!

Silence in the swan's flight

Between us no longer whole!

'Immortal Goddess, your lids

Deny me now my treasures,

Your flesh turned stone forbids

Mine from its gentle pressures!

'By what unfair eclipse 

D'you wean me off that sky?

You're what without my lips?

What without love am I?

Without asperity

The pending Source replied:

'So hard you've bitten me

You stopped the heart in my side.'

The steps

Children of my silence, they tread,

Your steps, saintly, gently, unrushed

Towards the vigil of my bed, 

Processional, polished and hushed.

Someone pure, a shadow divine,

Your cautious steps, how sweet, how sweet!

Gods! ... All the gifts imagined mine

Came to me on those naked feet!

If, with your lips now forward brought,

You're ready to allay like this

The inhabitant of my thought

With the nourishment of a kiss,

Don't rush the tender action through,

Being and not being, so sweet;

For I have lived awaiting you,

My heart was just your padding feet.

The sash

When sky the colour of a cheek

Allows the sight a cherished eyeing

And on the golden verge of dying

In the roses time plays hide-and-seek,

Before one dumbfound with delight

That such a painting captivates,

With flying sash a shade gyrates

That evening's close to seize in flight.

In the light breath of air swirled,

That flying sash so vagabond

Sets quivering the final bond

Of my silence with this world ...

Absent, present ,,, I'm quite alone,

And sombre, shroud so sweetly sewn.

The sleeping woman

What burning secrets does my young friend keep,

Soul breathing through her gentle mask a flower?

What vain foods does this artless warmth devour

To light the radiance of a woman's sleep?

Breath, silence, dreams, calm invincibly deep,

You triumph, peace beyond a tear in power,

When, on the breast of such a foe, the hour

Of sleep's high tide conspires with slow full sweep.

Sleeper, gold mass of shadows, wanton shifts,

Your awesome peace is loaded with such gifts,

Doe in your long languor beside the grapes,

That, though your soul in hells is occupied,

With its clear belly a liquid arm now drapes,

Your form's awake, awake, and my eyes are wide.