I sip my quiet through a cup of coffee, while
on the outside of my angular
bubble made of brick,
wood, and window panes, silent
cars drive by
throwing off with their motion, over-exposed
pieces of the sun
from their also angled bubble
bodies, reflected into the eyes of every passer-by,
bouncing back and forth between us.

There's an innate feeling
of                                               
                                                      drift
                    that comes with
letting go.

The space we create for ourselves is,
by nature, weightless
until we fixate to the
points
in it which we made
to relate to;

because love is exactly like gravity,
and the points in space
are planets and stars,
celestial bodies
just perfectly warm enough for life
to explore,
orientations to look up from
and see
the rest of it,
but when we realize who it was
wrought the cosm
and we wake
stupefied and lucid
those pieces,
seeming both so distant and close,
unweave themselves from the fabric
and like magic
they disappear.

Our fists
forced gently into grasplessness
panic at the lack of that
substance our tongues and eyes
and right-side-up sensibilities
wish so desperately was there
from the beginning.
We start floating
of some unknown accordance,
though undoubtedly, deeply our own,
towards the next and closest
brightest shining
source of love.

XXI

Say over again, and yet once over again,
That thou dost love me. Though the word repeated
Should seem ‘a cuckoo-song,’ as thou dost treat it,
Remember, never to the hill or plain,
Valley and wood, without her cuckoo-strain
Comes the fresh Spring in all her green completed.
Beloved, I, amid the darkness greeted
By a doubtful spirit-voice, in that doubt’s pain
Cry, ‘Speak once more—thou lovest! ‘Who can fear
Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll,
Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year?
Say thou dost love me, love me, love me—toll
The silver iterance!—only minding, Dear,
To love me also in silence with thy soul.

En l’an trentiesme do mon aage
    Que toutes mes hontes j’ay beues…


Pipit sate upright in her chair
     Some distance from where I was sitting;
Views of the Oxford Colleges
     Lay on the table, with the knitting.

Daguerreotypes and silhouettes,
     Her grandfather and great great aunts,
Supported on the mantelpiece
     An Invitation to the Dance.

     . . . . .

I shall not want Honour in Heaven
     For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney
And have talk with Coriolanus
     And other heroes of that kidney.

I shall not want Capital in Heaven
     For I shall meet Sir Alfred Mond.
We two shall lie together, lapt
     In a five per cent. Exchequer Bond.

I shall not want Society in Heaven,
     Lucretia Borgia shall be my Bride;
Her anecdotes will be more amusing
     Than Pipit’s experience could provide.

I shall not want Pipit in Heaven:
     Madame Blavatsky will instruct me
In the Seven Sacred Trances;
     Piccarda de Donati will conduct me.

     . . . . .

But where is the penny world I bought
     To eat with Pipit behind the screen?
The red-eyed scavengers are creeping
     From Kentish Town and Golder’s Green;

Where are the eagles and the trumpets?

     Buried beneath some snow-deep Alps.
Over buttered scones and crumpets
     Weeping, weeping multitudes
Droop in a hundred A.B.C.’s

The nature of a doorway
is both open and shut.
Wait not for the mending of time
'for tending your bruises and cuts.

Ask the moon if she prefers
fullness over cast in shadow.
Her reply, "A darkened sky
makes oceans no more shallow."