Breathe still for me, composed upon the sheet
you wind about my heart.
The moon is full tonight.
Her breathing is in time with yours
upon a moonlit bed. If she could die,
she would, to be as full of you
as I am. Her shining smooths
your brow where time has creased it.
How can she be more full than you,
shining, as you are, within me?
My love, if all the world must sleep
within itself, then let us ask the moon
to waken us. Perhaps she will oblige
and wrap her silver arms around your waist
as you lie dreaming of the moon upon your face.

Truth and Beauty had a quarrel, so I've heard,
(my ear pressed to the keyhole of desire.)
I heard one say, "I saw you flirt with Liar
on the couch, where Lust had gorged himself,
and later, sated as he was, he stood and watched
you play the fool, while Liar played you false."
The other answered, "Love, I could not help myself,
for Liar took your form. I beg you to forgive me."

I often think of words like these, especially
when walking on the beach, where waves are clasping
hands together, whispering foamy words in
salted ears; or in the woods, where one pine
strokes another in the wind, and says,
"O my lover, yes my lover,
rub me that way one more time."

Your mind became no longer yours,
dear one. It escaped somehow
from fissures in your skull and,

sulking, retired to some distant corner.
Duality became you, while you became
unknown to all, an ever present terror

on the street. Did your anger crawl
beneath the sheets at night and nestle,
snarling, at your feet? Mere despair

became a blessing. Gods in ghostly white,
mindful of your tortured psyche,
dispensed therapy and pills-

an endless communion. I knelt there
with you, upon the alter unforgiving,
and in my lucid mind I prayed,

Bless me dear, for I have sinned
against you, neither of us knowing
how or why, as reason passed us by.

I once loved a woman who walked in the day-
My love was returned when she looked in my way-
And sweet was the bed where my lover would lay
in the crook of my arm
in the hollow of my arm
in the crook and the hollow of my arm.

Then soon came the day when she said, "We must wed"-
And cold grew the heart, and empty the bed-
And Death was the thing that I saw there instead
in the crook of her arm
in the hollow of her arm
in the crook and the hollow of her arm.

Now I go a-walking in woods of the night-
Where hoot owls are calling, and moonshine is bright-
And soon they will find me, my head hanging white
in the crook of my arm
in the hollow of my arm
in the crook and the hollow of my arm.

Get down from there, my old man said,
before you hurt yourself.
Me and Little Sis were playing
in the hayloft where all the bales
were piled up high- so high

they liked to touch the barn roof.
I always liked to play
in the fortress the bales made,
like the castles and forts
in the picture book on Grandma's shelf

in the parlor. Pa and Grandpa
worked all day getting in the hay,
and when the day was done
they would sit in the parlor
and take turns drinking from the jug

on the shelf. After a while they would
start singing and cracking jokes
and acting kind of foolish,
and Grandma would holler at them
and tell them to act their age,

and when they got all tuckered out
Grandma would put the cork back in
the jug and put it back on the shelf.
One time I was out playing in the barn,
and I heard voices in the hayloft,

sort of a rustling sound, and now and then
a giggle, and I looked and saw
Big Sis and the farmhand playing
in the hay, and they saw me and
yelled at me, telling me to go away

and leave them alone. Later on
I saw where Big Sis was getting kind of fat
in the belly, and I said something
about it, and Big Sis got all mad
and threw her milk cup at me.

Pa said something like that's what happens
when girls make hay on their own,
and Grandma said that ain't
the right kind of hay to make,
and Big Sis got kind of red in the face.

I only ever saw Pa and Grandpa
make the hay, and when I asked them
what it all meant, they only chuckled,
and told me to go out and play.
I guess maybe I'll figure it out someday.