The two of us make evenings
that go murdering the days
as dark, fathomless gulls do,
clouding together in thousands.
You are still, they lash at me
and I touch you, I touch you,
but you won’t breathe.

O betrothed, my beloved
I am drowning as the twilight marbles you,
making empty echoes of your eyes,
making empty cradles of mine,
and of your veins
gentle, glancing pearls.

Beautiful thing, you are eaten;
the sea is like terrible glass,
like many climbing razors
and it licks the ash of your hands,
it roars at your dead lips.

This is the way of things,
the sand wreathes old corpses
and you are made less by the tide,
the flint of far-off moons.

Effigy, effigy, come back with me,
am I to leave you,
not to breathe?

I am a child calling
for arms he cannot see,
there is no touch a-falling,
there is the dark and he.
Step I would then from his limbs
and with my tender hands
I'd hold him tightly so he dies,
I'd ask he understand.

How soft your breath, how coarse my skin,
           how oft you rest like porcelain
as I, with tread so callous, head so proud,
intrude like ballast in threads of gown.
           How ineptly I love you,
           how delicately you love me.

It is easy to hold you, it is like breath,
          it is fraught then to lose you, it is like death,
I write what is simple, I write what is true,
and always I write, always for you.

Hath not I worn your own eyes?
Hath not I mocked sight divine?
To eat from me is bitter fruit,
for sharp the twang of briar's lute;
and o my touch is oft my strain,
for you a weakly beat refrain.

Alive, alive, a life I lied!
What joy to hear you softly pine,
what sin to give a heart not mine
a wondrous plume so brightly dyed.
If bleed to see me kiss you ill,
you bleed for me? Then bleed you will.

Might I speak to you in twain?
For know you only of my name;
it's in your dreams that 'I' resides,
not I, entreating your bedside,
not I, repeating your asides,
grazing fangs upon your hide.

You are to me the summer breeze,
the dance of newly blooming trees
and thrill might I to feel you still,
to pluck the sway of daffodil,
but lo the madness of the storm,
the pull, the screaming eye that warms.

Do you remember how I leapt at your touch?
How your fingers traced goose bumps,
springing as flowers do,
while my lips, my eyes
ate you like evening eats sun,
the birdsong, the shade.

I was turned as a butterfly is turned, in your hands,
dying, while you marvelled at my bright colours,
my swift wings,
my eyes blinking in the sky.
You are like the emptiness set in doorways
when revels are gone.

I would wear you as you wore me, in halls,
on floors, our legs like winking rain,
and I would touch you,
again, and again.
I wish your words had stayed like velvet
on my tongue, and they had not eaten me,
beaten me, I wish
you looked as I do,
desperately, desperately.

To the poet, my darling,
your tomb on the hill
says I love you, I love you,
as you wear away still.