I

In that early summer you were my enemy of sleep,
Sensuous as the scent of limes which parts the humid thighs of the night,
Each sleeping moment lying in wait with lips parched by lust,
each waking moment meeting in rain-sweet kisses,
thick as the hazel sap in the coppiced core of woods,
liquid as the twighlit songthrushes.
Desire stands in your eyes like candles, green as spring leaves
piercing my soul like gods hunting, prying invisible corners,
legs lissom with the morning sun in blondeness
lithe as young beeches, mighty in pubescent nakedness,
gooseberry-breasted apple-pip nippled,
a thirsty plain at the monsoon's edge.
Beyond unclothed dreams we were new Magellans
firing huts at the sea's edge
or in ruined churches at dusk,
your lips lurked in wait like flowers bursting with the agony of spring,
fireworks, the pain of an opening beech-bud, blazing oil on ice.

II

Summer went.
Now in the hammered hatred of autumn
we fold in apprehensive sheets stale with the smell of old secretions,
the stench of burnt roses and drunkards' urine in our mouths.
Owl-beaked exile bites us,
nettles our throats pulsing with blood, bitter, bitter.
Toes and heels pass hard waves on the rippled sand
searching for lives sloughed carelessly in summer
cast as far as water flows,
as far as snow, as far as winding death carouses.
Sharp north wind blows from you now, murdering our nurtured swallows,
running like a freezing river in spate between us,
drowning me in shadowy swirling pools hung deep with alders.
I count the leaves of hate as they fall from our tree
blasted as naked as rocks by this sharp north wind.
One handful, two handfuls, three handfuls'

III

The winter moonlight is leprous.
I remember nothing
except the casual day we wish it had never begun,
never undressed, never dared to dare.
Late light nakedly, shamelessly kisses mirrors in this,
our cold cave.
Living slow as tortoises, persisting only vaguely,
we are at our lowest tide, twisted pathetically together.
A barren day passes
slow as an ox-cart bearing a coffin,
thirst and salt on a swollen tongue.

O enemy, my enemy, dusty our love now is,
and folded like dead cherry blossom
dragged by the worm into the consuming earth
humic and rain-drenched, blackened with corroding soot,
crumbling stones in its horny cupped hands.
Angry as daggers the swallow dies
and the butterfly freezes on the mountain snow,
hours alone flapping hopelessly towards crumpled death.