I woke to nobody. Desire. Intent.
And her to follow as embodiment.
Twilight. The streets invite me. They run down
Towards the harbour. In the heart of town
Some common land where road and quayside merge.
A kestrel weighs above. On a grass verge
A rabbit, tempted out, soon bobs away.
I drift back to the shopfronts. Now the day
Is switched off, starker lights illumine whores
Who, between open street and shuttered doors,
Poise, whispering incitements. Manliness,
Withdrawn and shy, rises to the caress
Of smooth obscenity, that heady charm,
Which leads me, not to pleasure nor to harm,
But down an inward subway, a deep maze
Of infinitely bifurcating ways.
I meet you in a room too dark for shame
And call you Love, who have no other name.
Naked, it feels as if some filmy dress
Still clung invisibly to her bare flesh.
It is like language clothed in irony:
Her body – smooth, particular and free –
Is offered in the name of love, might seem
The incarnation of a general dream;
Yet, though I tremble at her skilled caress,
I know I am not the object of address.
What you find – making love, with no love meant –
Is contact without cóntent; without contént.
An hour before my train. Leaving the car,
I cross the station to a burger bar
That looks out on the street. I sit and read –
Drink tea, drink good strong prose, and do not heed
The garish colours round me or outside
The urgent traffic at its fullest tide.
Combatively my book affirms the good
Of this world’s substance – always understood,
First, that the mind which loves the world is more
Than what it loves; then (in a sense the core
Of such love) that if earthly powers deny
Our love its freedom, we are free to die.
Oh but it’s dark already. Across the way
She stands, under a streetlamp, on display,
A handsome woman, black, in red high heels;
A string vest of the selfsame red reveals,
More than it clothes, her breasts’ full luxury,
And skin-tight silver ski-pants generously
Outline her other curves, from hip to calf.
I rise, contemplative, then stand and laugh
In the doorway. Words gone, the train can go.
What else in the wide world could move me so?