Because love hungered in earth, in clay, and in the flowers in trees,
in the clustered blossoms of air
and the wavering pallor of sky and seas,
what should I do when such clear,
quiet themes, battered and bitten by rust and skein, grow
as mute as the cold horse-dung?
Is this not where my miserable dreams
***** out each snow-candle and cut each tongue?

Why do you laugh so (restless and calm) when I,
from the spluttering, red-crested downs
and infernal pother of fire-sparks to the sky,
would wail and wallow in grief? Why
have you woken, small breasted, laughing
beside me, calling me fool and madman,
puritan prater? You –
whom my hot lust burns to consume and chew!

We came down to a pond-
the stem of the **** was bleached
but brazen and bold.
                                   Chidden about the air
was a peppering fury of care,
and a wavering strand of gold, but darker and darker
(what tantrums the landscape threw!)
by the dangerous edge of things, we shouted it out. We’re through!
Tears grew.
                  We spoke
in that murderous murmur that even the sedge
refuses to voice when choked and hassled
by hustling wind blown over, its edge,
we spoke –
                    but only wild birds awoke to our “haven”
of heaven-hell-roped.