You whispered softly in the ear of my joyous heart.
You know what's on my mind, you've heard my thoughts.
I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways.

And the coolness of your smile is
stirringofbirds between my arms

Your breath
falls around me
like dew

A mountain keeps an echo deep inside. That's how I hold your voice.

I sleep with thee, and wake with thee,
And yet thou are not there;
I fill my arms with thoughts of thee,
And press the common air.

You hurt and have sharp desire,
yet your presence is a healing calm.

Let some word reach my ears and touch my heart,

All my ways of being are musical and mysterious.
Yet I embrace you openly.
Ripe with expectancy.

How is it that I am now so softly awakened,
My leaves shaken down with music? — Darling, I love you.

It is not your mouth, for I have known mouths before, — Though your mouth is more alive than roses,
Roses singing softly
To green leaves after rain.

It is not your eyes, for I have dived often in eyes, — Though your eyes, even in the yellow glare of footlights,
Are windows into eternal dusk.

Nor is it the live white flashing of your feet,
Nor your gay hands, catching at motes in the spotlight;
Nor the abrupt thick music of your laughter,
When, against the hideous backdrop,
With all its crudities brilliantly lighted,
Suddenly you catch sight of your alarming shadow,
Whirling and contracting.

How is it, then, that I am now so keenly aware,
So sensitive to the surges of the wind, or the light,
Heaving silently under blue seas of air? — Darling, I love you, I am immersed in you…

I have put the ear of my soul in the widow
of your heart

I Love You

I love your lips when they’re wet with wine

And red with a wild desire;

I love your eyes when the lovelight lies

Lit with a passionate fire.

I love your arms when the warm white flesh

Touches mine in a fond embrace;

I love your hair when the strands enmesh

Your kisses against my face.

Not for me the cold, calm kiss

Of a virgin’s bloodless love;

Not for me the saint’s white bliss,

Nor the heart of a spotless dove.

But give me the love that so freely gives

And laughs at the whole world’s blame,

With your body so young and warm in my arms,

It sets my poor heart aflame.

So kiss me sweet with your warm wet mouth,

Still fragrant with ruby wine,

And say with a fervor born of the South

That your body and soul are mine.

Clasp me close in your warm young arms,

While the pale stars shine above,

And we’ll live our whole young lives away

In the joys of a living love.

I don't hear your words: your voice reverberates against my body like another kind of caress, another kind of penetration. I have no power over your voice. It comes straight from you into me. I could stuff my ears and it would find its way into my blood and make it rise.

You are like a fire: you warm me.

My voice rings down through thousands of years to coil around your body and give you strength, you who have wept in direct sunlight, who have hungered in invisible chains, tremble to the cadence of my legacy: An army of lovers shall not fail.