PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

(London:  Saturday, near dawn, September 8, 1888)

Our moments are too far apart and few.

Between times, every thought returns to you.

And I remember each one of your kisses:

and Memory can well preserve such blisses.

To be away from you so very long

seems (I confess it here) both right and wrong:

right that I should not exploit you the more---

so that some could suspect you are a whore;

wrong to deny myself the poetry

of your almost naked carnality.

That man you live with in that rented room

exults in madness, and dares to presume

that he owns you.  The concept of possession

does not respect love, nor give it expression.

Much as I want to soothe yours, my own fears

attend your absence, and bathe it in tears.

My friends say, "Absence brings appreciation

to fever pitch in its anticipation."

But they dismiss it far too easily:

my soul lacks, when I lack your company.

I say this to you, bursting from my soul---

you make what has been broken in me, whole.

And who you are, not what, is far above

our bodies' happy penchant to make love.

Starward