FOR PROSERPINE
Reading edition
OUR purple tongues that testify The pomegranate has been broken Are stained, their roots and buds are stained, with the shy Fruity pleasure of us, met, spoken. (I shall remember the days Of my youth and your beautiful new ways.) In fierce decay I’ll find a stripe Of honey sweetening the tart Old brain. I shall not know again such ripe Beauty of the burst, dark heart. (I’ll think of my absurd, Impossible, pledged, serious word.) My undivulged interior world A country for our souls shall be, Till I am done with name and number, gnarled And mindless like a babbling tree. (A heavy bird will brood On women stagnant in their blood.) Preserve you from the long farewell Whose sex is flowers, whose breasts are grain. Return, return. Into a leafless hell Gradually drops the brain. (The bulls, the stallions, have tasted Incredible fruit. Their seed is wasted.)