To the Man I Married
You are my earth and all the earth implies:
The gravity that ballasts me in space,
The air I breathe, the land that stills my cries
For food and shelter against devouring days.
You are the earth whose orbit marks my way
And sets my north and south, my east and west,
You are the final, elemented clay
The driven heart must turn to for its rest.
If in your arms that hold me now so near
I lift my keening thoughts to Helicon
As trees long rooted to the earth uprear
Their quickening leaves and flowers to the sun,
You who are earth, O never doubt that I
Need you no less because I need the sky!
To A Lost One
I shall haunt you o my lost one, as the twilight
haunts a re-entangled trail,
and your dreams will linger strangely with the music
of a phantom lover’s tale,
you shall not forget, for I am past forgetting,
I shall come to you again
with the starlight and the scent of wild champacas,
and the melody of rain.
You shall not forget. Dust will peer into your
window, tragic-eyed and still,
and unbidden, startle you into remembrance
with its hand upon the sill.
Revolt of the Hymen
O to be free at last, to sleep at last
As infants sleep within the womb of rest!
To stir and stirring find no blackness vast
With passion weighted down upon the breast,
To turn the face this way and that and feel
No kisses festering on it like sores,
To be alone at last, broken the seal
That marks the flesh no better than a whore’s!
