It can only ripen and ripen.
And men, they too are wounded.
They too are sifted from their loss
and are without hope. The core
softens. The pure flesh softens
and melts. There are thorns, there
are the dark seeds, and they end.
C. K. Williams, 1969
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Cummings
may i feel said he
may i feel said he
(i'll squeal said she
just once said he)
it's fun said she
(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she
(let's go said he
not too far said she
what's too far said he
where you are said she)
may i stay said he
(which way said she
like this said he
if you kiss said she
may i move said he
is it love said she)
if you're willing said he
(but you're killing said she
but it's life said he
but your wife said she
now said he)
ow said she
(tiptop said he
don't stop said she
oh no said he)
go slow said she
(cccome?said he
ummm said she)
you're divine!said he
(you are Mine said she)
e. e. cummings, 1935
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Vidyakara
Four Poems
An embrace at first and then a loving kiss
had been her losses in the gambling match.
Now when her lover asks again for stakes
she is silent, though the flesh upon her cheek
rises with suppressed excitement, and her hand
is sweating as she moves the piece.
Rajasekhara
As he came to bed the knot fell open of itself,
the dress held only somehow to my hips
by the strands of the loosened girdle.
So much I know, my dear;
but when within his arms, I can't remember
who he was
or who I was, or what we did or how.
Vikatanitamba
The night was deep,
the lamp shone forth with heavy flame,
and that darling is an expert
in the rite which passion prompts;
but, my dear, he made love slowly,
slowly and with limbs constrained,
for the bed kept up a creaking
like an enemy with gnashing teeth.
Vidya
Her dress is somewhat tarnished,
the flowers lie disheveled in her hair;
her eye is torpid, while her breast
is marked with the fresh track of nails;
her loins are lighted by a serpent jewel
that shines within her girdle's opening clasp:
such is the poison she has taken,
body pressed to body, from the many men
who love her.
Vallana
Vidyakara's "Treasury"
translated by Daniel H. H. Ingalls
from 11th-Century Sanskrit
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Lawrence
Lightning
I felt the lurch and halt of her heart
Next my breast, where my own heart
was beating;
And I laughed to feel it plunge and bound,
And strange in my blood-swept ears was
the sound
Of the words I kept repeating,
Repeating with tightened arms, and the
hot blood's blindfold art.
Her breath flew warm against my neck,
Warm as a flame in the close night air;
And the sense of her clinging flesh was sweet
Where her arms and my neck's blood-surge
could meet.
Holding her thus, did I care
That the black night hid her from me, blotted out
every speck?
I leaned me forward to find her lips,
And claim her utterly in a kiss,
When the lightning flew across her face,
And I saw her for the flaring space
Of a second, afraid of the clips
Of my arms, inert with dread, wilted in fear
of my kiss.
A moment, like a wavering spark,
Her face lay there before my breast,
Pale love lost in a snow of fear,
And guarded by a glittering tear,
And lips apart with dumb cries;
A moment, and she was taken again in the
merciful dark.
I heard the thunder, and felt the rain,
And my arms fell loose, and I was dumb.
Almost I hated her, she was so good,
Hated myself, and the place, and my blood,
Which burned with rage, as I bade her come
Home, away home, ere the lightning floated
forth again.
D. H. Lawrence, 1911
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Yeats
Leda and the Swan
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
William Butler Yeats, 1928
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Justice
In Bertram's Garden
Jane looks down at her organdy skirt
As if it somehow were the thing disgraced,
For being there, on the floor, in the dirt,
And she catches it up about her waist,
Smooths it out along one hip,
And pulls it over the crumpled slip.
On the porch, green-shuttered, cool,
Asleep is Bertram, that bronze boy,
Who, having wound her around a spool,
Sends her spinning like a toy
Out to the garden, all alone,
To sit and weep on a bench of stone.
Soon the purple dark will bruise
Lily and bleeding heart and rose,
And the little Cupid lose
Eyes and ears and chin and nose,
And Jane lie down with others soon
Naked to the naked moon.
Donald Justice, 1954
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Rich
Two Songs
1
Sex, as they harshly call it,
I fell into this morning
at ten o'clock, a drizzling hour
of traffic and wet newspapers.
I thought of him who yesterday
clearly didn't
turn me to a hot field
ready for plowing,
and longing for that young man
piercèd me to the roots
bathing every vein, etc.
All day he appears to me
touchingly desirable,
a prize one could wreck one's peace for.
I'd call it love if love
didn't take so many years
but lust too is a jewel
a sweet flower and what
pure happiness
to know
all our high-toned questions
breed in a lively animal.
2
That "old last act"!
Any yet sometimes
all seems post coitum triste
and I a mere bystander.
Somebody else is going off,
getting shot to the moon.
Or, a moon-race!
Split seconds after
my opposite number
lands
I make it—
we lie fainting together
at a crater-edge
heavy as mercury in our moonsuits
till he speaks—
in a different language
yet one I've picked up
through cultural exchanges. . .
we murmur the first moonwords:
Spasibo. Thanks. O.K.
Adrienne Rich, 1964
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Glück
Mock Orange
It is not the moon, I tell you.
It is these flowers
lighting the yard.
I hate them.
I hate them as I hate sex,
the man's mouth
sealing my mouth, the man's
paralyzing body—
and the cry that always escapes,
the low, humiliating
premise of union—
In my mind tonight
I hear the question and pursuing answer
fused in one sound
that mounts and mounts and then
is split into the old selves,
the tired antagonisms. Do you see?
We were made fools of.
And the scent of mock orange
drifts through the window.
How can I rest?
How can I be content
when there is still
that odor in the world?
Louise Glück, 1985
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Donne
Woman's Constancy
Now thou hast loved me one whole day,
Tomorrow when thou leav'st, what wilt thou say?
Wilt thou then antedate some new made vow?
Or say that now
We are not just those persons which we were?
Or, that oaths made in reverential fear
Of Love, and his wrath, any may forswear?
Or, as true deaths true marriages untie,
So lovers' contracts, images of those,
Bind but till sleep, death's image, them unloose?
Or, your own end to justify,
For having purposed change and falsehood, you
Can have no way but falsehood to be true?
Vain lunatic, against these 'scapes I could
Dispute and conquer, if I would,
Which I abstain to do,
For by tomorrow, I may think so too.
John Donne, 1601
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Etherege
To a Lady asking him how long
he would love her
It is not, Celia, in our power
To say how long our love will last;
It may be we within this hour
May lose those joys we now do taste;
The Blessed, that immortal be,
From change in love are only free.
Then, since we mortal lovers are,
Ask not how long our love will last;
But while it does, let us take care
Each minute be with pleasure passed:
Were it not madness to deny
To live because we're sure to die!
Sir George Etherege, c.1665
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Carew
To My Inconstant Mistress
When thou, poor excommunicate
From all the joys of love, shalt see
The full reward and glorious fate
Which my strong faith shall purchase me,
Then curse thine own inconstancy.
A fairer hand than thine shall cure
That heart, which thy false oaths did wound;
And to my soul, a soul more pure
Than thine, shall by Love's hand be bound,
And both with equal glory crowned.
Then shalt thou weep, entreat, complain
To Love, as I did once to thee;
When all thy tears shall be as vain
As mine were then; for thou shalt be
Damned for thy false apostacy.
Thomas Carew, 1640
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Suckling
The Constant Lover
Out upon it, I have loved
Three whole days together!
And am like to love three more,
If it prove fair weather.
Time shall moult away his wings
Ere he shall discover
In the whole wide world again
Such a constant lover.
But the spite on 't is, no praise
Is due at all to me:
Love with me had made no stays,
Had it any been but she.
Had it any been but she,
And that very face,
There had been at least ere this
A dozen dozen in her place.
Sir John Suckling, 1642
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Sexton
For My Lover, Returning to
She is all there.
She was melted carefully down for you
and cast up from your childhood,
cast up from your one hundred favorite aggies.
She has always been there, my darling.
She is, in fact, exquisite.
Fireworks in the dull middle of February
and as real as a cast-iron pot.
Let's face it, I have been momentary.
A luxury. A bright red sloop in the harbor.
My hair rising like smoke from the car window.
Littleneck clams out of season.
She is more than that. She is your have to have,
has grown you your practical your tropical
growth.
This is not an experiment. She is all harmony.
She sees to oars and oarlocks for the dinghy,
has placed wild flowers at the window
at breakfast,
sat by the potter's wheel at midday,
set forth three children under the moon,
three cherubs drawn by Michelangelo,
done this with her legs spread out
in the terrible months in the chapel.
If you glance up, the children are there
like delicate balloons resting on the ceiling.
She has also carried each one down the hall
after supper, their heads privately bent,
two legs protesting, person to person,
her face flushed with a song and their little sleep.
I give you back your heart.
I give you permission—
for the fuse inside her, throbbing
angrily in the dirt, for the bitch in her—
and the burying of her wound—
for the burying of her small red wound alive—
for the pale flickering flare under her ribs,
for the drunken sailor who waits in her left
pulse,
for the mother's knee, for the stockings,
for the garter belt, for the call—
the curious call
when you will burrow in arms and breasts
and tug at the orange ribbon in her hair
and answer the call, the curious call.
She is so naked and singular.
She is the sum of yourself and your dream.
Climb her like a monument, step after step.
She is solid.
As for me, I am a watercolor.
I wash off.
Anne Sexton, 1969
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Warner
The House Gro
wn Silent
After he had gone the wind rose,
Buffeting the house and rumbling in the chimney,
And I thought: It will roar against him like a lion
As onward he goes.
Seven miles before him, all told—
Chilled will be the lips I kissed so warm at parting,
Kissed in vain; for he's forth into the wind,
and kisses
Won't keep out the cold.
Closer should I have kissed, fondlier prayed:
Pleasant is the room in the wakeful firelight,
And within is the bed, arrayed with peace
and safety.
Would he had stayed!
Sylvia Townsend Warner, 1928
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Anonymous
Western Wind
Western wind, when will thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ, if my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again!
Author unknown, c.1500
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Snyder
Siwashing it out once in
Siuslaw Forest
I slept underrhododendron
All night blossoms fell
Shivering on a sheet of cardboard
Feet stuck in my pack
Hands deep in my pockets
Barely able to sleep.
I remembered when we were in school
Sleeping togetherin a big warm bed
We were the youngest lovers
When we broke up we were still nineteen.
Now our friends are married
You teach school back east
I don't mind living this way
Green hills the long blue beach
But sometimes sleeping in the open
I think back when I had you.
Miyazawa Kenji
translated by Gary Snyder, 1968
Next | TOC> What Lips My Lips> Tennyson
O that 'twere possible
O that 'twere possible
After long grief and pain