part
three:
farewells
a
She’s left me now.
There is no hope in her.
I could not ask,
it’s gone beyond the end
I worry what will happen to her next,
who will be her lover, or her friend ?
She has to break me
and to break from me
I am so spineless I could never leave
from hurt, from love, not even from contempt,
since I have worn my heart out on this sleeve.
b
A searing cold which warps or splinters thought
revealing as mere dream what had seemed real
a carapace of ice which tears the touch
and burns the hand which reaches out to feel.
Molten woman, if she ever sets
a momentary flux re-animates
the slick, lubricious flow of meltingness
which cannot be contained, yet captivates.
Rolled within her wheel of ice and fire
I alternate, attracted and repelled,
and I remain quite helpless to resist
the charms and challenges by which I’m held.
c
I’m entangled in her infinite
trapped and tortured, tamed and entertained
entered and entranced by all of it:
her bravery, her self-defeating fear,
all the undercurrents draw me there.
My love’s never constant or secure,
I do not love for comfort or for pain,
not for money, not as saint or whore,
the circle I describe is centred here
and endlessly repeated, since I care.
I’ve been through everywhere and round again
she’s born and broken in a circle’s span
and I am carried with her, slapped against
the song-encrusted rocks where we began.
d
The pale ghost of a sun (not to be seen)
a screen of trees,
I have no entertainment but for these.
I should not think of you
since I get lost
among my ceremonial of dreams:
you are my last entanglement, it seems,
as life has sliced away most other knots.
What can I think of, then?
My head is turned.....
I know you,
know you’re mine
but how can I convince
when I am only half of what I was
and that was only half of what you need?
Still I believe and suffer,
breathe and wince,
a comical disaster,
hero-fool.
I do not want your pity but your joy
in something you can’t make, nor yet destroy.