And how? You constantly arouse me by presentiments;
a sweet and strange mix of relief every morning
at waking up in the gusts of your musky
fragrance, and the renewal of misery; fear of
impending loss, the wondrous outlines of your lips,
just out of reach, when I am looking into the mirror, smiling,
combing my lustrous hair, each strand casting
wobbling patterns of shadow and light, my ageing skin
immorally beautiful, like an envelope folded over several times.

How solemn is soppy celibacy? Suffering as much as delighting
in air of expectancy, our bodies growing hot, chasing
each other around a track sown with violets and thorns,
tongues lapping, hunger for flesh on fingertips;
I am unfolded, unarticulated, deluge me with pails of texts,
magical nouns, verbs, adjectives of beautiful, douse the burning
phrases, white lines, when you take me, my hair, my throat,
my limbs, the world lays on floor, slightly broken, chequered
with colours, the splinters of cracked mirror make music.

Together in an erotic dream they speak to the star-strewn
sky, naked. She hears him stretching his arm to string stars
like pearls with all his skill, her skin glittering in milky veil.
A streak of amber in his eyes shatters the woman he holds
in delicious splintering. Confetti in her arms, ungiven kisses
splash the clusters of jasmine, she trembles like a struck violin,
for the man she loves had walked away in a bubble of music,
on the previous night in the middle of an unending poetry.
In the cleft of clouds a succession of moon-lit puddles float
drowsily toward her, she cranes her neck to meet the necklace,
his fingers lingering on her throat, ecstatic jewelled specks
slipping down her soft body, the round and full tawny moons
creeping to his side, her lips part like a bruised strawberry
to reproach him, Ah! How well he knows the autumn wound
laid bare on her breast! ‘What does she want?’ he searches
himself for reassuring words, long misspent in ambiguous
whispering. At the brink of illuminating destiny, an insatiable
hunger in her eyes, he fingers the circle of sparklers writhing
around her neck, caressing her shoulder blades, his heavy
fragrance permeate her nostrils, ‘You!,’ her silent shriek
reverberates in the dense blue sky, their souls divested of
bodies; the one fair, and another dusky, mate in the dank air.

I mustn’t think of you, the ripples of love over moist skins,
the stinging world of magic, soul-sex, your hair tinctured
with gold, of the times when you meant what you said.
I must lay your thoughts aside, like the shrill buzz of cicadas,
cover your pale face out of sight, like cardinal motes of
daylight, which might diffuse one day in thick coral folds
to suffuse my glittering surface chequered with old frights.
I should simply doze on rickety chairs, delighting in far off
tenors of memory, bewailing the parting with spent dreams,
a wonderful craving in the gut, strident screeches of pigeons,
running taps, a game of truth and dare, credible lies. I’ll look
back with empty eyes, at the tiny month of ecstatic nights,
foolishly sweet, instant fires, hold my soul in flat palm, it’s
unhappy warmth clouding your splendour of silvery white.
I may be right I may be wrong, but I am out of way,
smoking lighted ends of cigarettes, stooping shy,
in the mounting sunrise your unbody merging with mine
my mouth on yours, just as I knew it would be one day ..