The Priest Says Goodbye

My love, the song is less than sung

when with your lips you take it from my tongue --

nor can you seize this firm erotic grace

and halt it tumbling into commonplace.

No one I know can set the hook

to fix lust in a longing look

where we can read from time to time

the absolute ballet our bodies mime.

Harry can't, his face in Sally's crotch,

nor Tom, who only loves when neighbours watch --

one mistakes the ballet for the chart,

one hopes that gossip will perform like art.

And what of art? When passion dies

friendship hovers round our flesh like flies,

and we name beautiful the smells

that corpses give and immortelles.

I have studied rivers: the waters rush

like eternal fire in Moses' bush.

Some things live with honour. I will see

lust burn like fire in a holy tree.

Do not come with me. When I stand alone

my voice sings out as though I did not own

my throat. Abelard proved how bright could be

the bed between the hermitage and nunnery.

You are beautiful. I will sing beside

rivers where longing Hebrews cried.

As separate exiles we can learn

how desert trees ignite and branches burn.

At certain crossroads we will win

the harvest of our discipline.

Swollen flesh, minds fed on wilderness --

O what a blaze of love our bodies press!