My love, I want nothing but to die in your arms
and life would be a cluster of sweet muscat grapes:
we strain to bear the weight of living;
love swipes with a claw all we’ve lived through
and shatters it – so much reddened fury,
behind the ivory door of sound, so much pure death
like your arms, like the impure words I speak
when harried by love, splintering life with pick blows,
pleasure and sweetness unfurl my future death.
Death present, death in your arms, like now
at the blue core of the night inspired and clear,
oh my Rosa, oh my Rosa, oh you, rosier still
for you harvest from roses the enduring light
molten and hard, beyond the hour of death
beyond the shadows that laugh haltingly
when bodies lie in the silence of rivers
and we find peace again, and in the death that detains us
we will always be two, statues that one day
will know love, and death binds:
never more, never more separate or distinct, oh supremest
venery of being, neither mascaron nor rag:
you, gospel of light, my life’s expiation.