take me to the edge of oblivion,
promise me your empty lies.

sweet ecstacy,
you take me to the edge of madness.

I have been here time and time again,
I always trust you with my heart.

In this brief moment of sanity,
I choose the mundane reality of my life
with promises of joys and pains.

There is a quiet transcendent ecstasy
in a life that leads to wholeness.

Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs,
you look like a world, lying in surrender.
My rough peasant's body digs in you
and makes the son leap from the depth of the earth.

I was lone like a tunnel. The birds fled from me,
and nigh swamped me with its crushing invasion.
To survive myself I forged you like a weapon,
like an arrow in my bow, a stone in my sling.

But the hour of vengeance falls, and I love you.
Body of skin, of moss, of eager and firm milk.
Oh the goblets of the breast! Oh the eyes of absence!
Oh the roses of the *****! Oh your voice, slow and sad!

Body of my woman, I will persist in your grace.
My thirst, my boundless desire, my shifting road!
Dark river-beds where the eternal thirst flows
and weariness follows, and the infinite ache.

Drunk as drunk on turpentine
From your open kisses,
Your wet body wedged
Between my wet body and the strake
Of our boat that is made of flowers,
Feasted, we guide it - our fingers
Like tallows adorned with yellow metal -
Over the sky's hot rim,
The day's last breath in our sails.

Pinned by the sun between solstice
And equinox, drowsy and tangled together
We drifted for months and woke
With the bitter taste of land on our lips,
Eyelids all sticky, and we longed for lime
And the sound of a rope
Lowering a bucket down its well. Then,
We came by night to the Fortunate Isles,
And lay like fish
Under the net of our kisses.

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine

You are the ship in the desert sand
The linings engraved in my hand
With the fragile trust I used to hold
The fire that burns my naked soul

In that ship I've been to places
Been to places in my head
Hard places with alien faces
In the soft of my own bed

In my purgatorial with myself
You are the last battle I won
The constant war of withdrawal
Which I lost before it had begun

You are the moon in the morning sky
My white orb when the noon is high
My blazing tempest summer fire
My mind's last dying desire

The pain that no longer lingers
The sand slipping through my fingers
Nights spent in wishful thinking
Remembering tears and fitful blinking

But I thank God that you were born
My perfect floating blizzard snow
My poetry given flawless form
Of whom I so selfishly let go

Sweet flower so far away blossom for me
Shine for me now with intensity
I will come and look at you everyday
My flower blossom for me far away

Flower sway in the wind for me gently
And dance in the rainstorm pleasantly
I will come to you in the afternoon
And look at you in your fullest bloom

When the sky is at its dying blue
And you are fast asleep by the brook
I will take just a petal from you
And keep it in my favourite book

Then under the ocean of stars
With the wolf in its lonely strain
My lovely shining flower afar
I will come and visit you again

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you