Last night I made love to my passionate countessa
as the Panonia Express
flashed by villages we only saw
as shivers of light
on the green enameled roof of the sleeping car.
Gone an undreamable distance beyond
that first kiss in Budapest,
nearly to Prague,
flaying the moon
as Czechoslovakia slipped under our bodies,
our moans sweetened the iron clatter
of rail and wheel
as we melted with pleasure.
When I woke at the Berlin station
she was gone.
She left a piece of ivory
curled in my hand.
Destroyed by strength
as much as weakness.
By the ravishing, bare-back, fantastic countessa,
by Guinevere, Mary, the moon,
the love invented against loneliness,
the heart exhausted by the mind.
Destroyed by the translucence
at the tip of a root.
The sound of a cello in an empty hall.
By what you can give and what you can take.
Lost by imagining what we cannot know
and knowing what we cannot have.
Believing love will bear us away
down the River of Babylon
to the rumored garden lush with pears.
Wanting it all at once,
the journey consumed
in a blaze of moonlight and dream
so pure even the ashes burn
into the color of her camisole.
And we, as if we’d been denied,
are left wanting even more.
The warmth of her body barely alive
in the piece of ivory curled in our hands.