Heal Softly, Lover, Burn Gently
No widow of burnt guitars,
no journal of summer
pressed between the pages
of the nightshift shales,
no blood on a chain,
or raven lost in the rags and ribbons
of her own black sails, not
frost on a garden that fails,
or a lock that's lost it keys,
or a rock that grieves for its plundered ores,
you are the candle and the seal
of all my mystic urgencies,
the gentle thief of my confessions
at the circuits and sessions
of a doomed man's last appeal
to die in the bay of your arms,
a dolphin, a bottle, a snail
that craved its way to you. Heal softly, lover, turn with the herbs
that follow the sun like clocks
and when your day is done
bathe in the dusk with the birds
that fly through the air like autumn,
and scented by the apricots
and peacock blues that pour out of my heart
like the eyes and inks of a prelude,
a painter, a pitcher of words,
rise from your ancient solitude renewed
and dressed by the wind
in your scarves and veils,
in your nets, your shawls and auroras,
in anklets, chokers, loops and chains
in your nebulae and orbits
and the lunar rain of your earrings,
wait for me as I will wait for you
where the nightjar sings
to celebrate his lover's soft approach
with every quill and feather of his wings.
And no world will deceive us,
no flame expire, no radiance cease,
no fracture mar the jubilant fire
that recast its heart in hell
to love you long and well.