Let us leave the rest in the dark
And sit by firelight.
The wine is warm in the hearth;
The flickers come and go.
I will warm your feet with kisses
Until they glow.
New Year's Eve
THERE are only two things now,
The great black night scooped out
And this fire-glow.
This fire-glow, the core,
And we the two ripe pips
That are held in store.
Listen, the darkness rings
As it circulates round our fire.
Take off your things.
Your shoulders, your bruised throat
Your breasts, your nakedness!
This fiery coat!
As the darkness flickers and dips,
As the firelight falls and leaps
From your feet to your lips!
New Year's Night
Now you are mine, to-night at last I say it;
You're a dove I have bought for sacrifice,
And to-night I slay it.
Here in my arms my naked sacrifice!
Death, do you hear, in my arms I am bringing
My offering, bought at great price.
She's a silvery dove worth more than all I've got.
Now I offer her up to the ancient, inexorable God,
Who knows me not.
Look, she's a wonderful dove, without blemish or
spot!
I sacrifice all in her, my last of the world,
Pride, strength, all the lot.
All, all on the altar! And death swooping down
Like a falcon. 'Tis God has taken the victim;
I have won my renown.
Valentine's Night
You shadow and flame,
You interchange,
You death in the game!
Now I gather you up,
Now I put you back
Like a poppy in its cup.
And so, you are a maid
Again, my darling, but new,
Unafraid.
My love, my blossom, a child
Almost! The flower in the bud
Again, undefiled.
And yet, a woman, knowing
All, good, evil, both
In one blossom blowing.
Birth Night
THIS fireglow is a red womb
In the night, where you're folded up
On your doom.
And the ugly, brutal years
Are dissolving out of you,
And the stagnant tears.
I the great vein that leads
From the night to the source of you,
Which the sweet blood feeds.
New phase in the germ of you;
New sunny streams of blood
Washing you through.
You are born again of me.
I, Adam, from the veins of me
The Eve that is to be.
What has been long ago
Grows dimmer, we both forget,
We no longer know.
You are lovely, your face is soft
Like a flower in bud
On a mountain croft.
This is Noël for me.
To-night is a woman born
Of the man in me.
Rabbit Snared in the Night
WHY do you spurt and sprottle
like that, bunny?
Why should I want to throttle
you, bunny?
Yes, bunch yourself between
my knees and lie still.
Lie on me with a hot, plumb, live weight,
heavy as a stone, passive,
yet hot, waiting.
What are you waiting for?
What are you waiting for?
What is the hot, plumb weight of your desire on
me?
You have a hot, unthinkable desire of me, bunny.
What is that spark
glittering at me on the unutterable darkness
of your eye, bunny?
The finest splinter of a spark
that you throw off, straight on the tinder of my
nerves!
It sets up a strange fire,
a soft, most unwarrantable burning
a bale-fire mounting, mounting up in me.
'Tis not of me, bunny.
It was you engendered it,
with that fine, demoniacal spark
you jetted off your eye at me.
I did not want it, this furnace, this draught-maddened fire which mounts up my arms making them swell with turgid, ungovernable strength. 'Twas not I that wished it, that my fingers should turn into these flames avid and terrible that they are at this moment. It must have been your inbreathing, gaping desire that drew this red gush in me; I must be reciprocating your vacuous, hideous passion. It must be the want in you that has drawn this terrible draught of white fire up my veins as up a chimney. It must be you who desire this intermingling of the black