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After
Shakespeare's Venus
and Adonis
"(Love) shall be sparing and too
full of riot"
Very few can resist the goddesses – so persuasive
are they, so
Erotic. Will's boy refuses wordy Venus, next night gets
Needled in the groin by a boar. The virgin fool.
Unsated stays Venus, all immortal and pissed,
Split. Fended off infinitely. Sweet-toothed
& all dressed up with nowhere to go.
And
so, Will: if love's cursed, why then song?
Diversion? Why jokes, beds or violins, with globe
Overthrown? Even nauseated with want, she sucked
None; though winter, his mangled body is made a violet.
You
Illustrate our curse: mortal love will be annual, circular,
and scrap.
Shine the glass, so we will behold ourselves – you
smack us all in ice.
Darling,
at the Inn
Darling, it's hot as Hades / You said it / heat a velvet
coat
draped over the bay. The conversation is impersonal; near-
strangers passing in a line, obliging, glasses with orange
juice.
And this mess, jumbled in her sweatpants, slipping
jam on toast, who dreamt someone gave her a Givenchy
veilless hat, blue silk UFO for the opera, which was silent
in the dream. There is the real, above-ground life but
last night
men came for her, as the hat was stolen, and there she
was,
left with her face. Wet. Unusual. Many children believe
all
is sleepwalk and talk, tulle and cobweb, illusion, and
how not far
off they are, consider, spooning your eggs. Buttering
the toast.
Above ground there are inns and docks, slick things suspended
in a net. There are libraries with a person reaching for
sweets.
But really we're being tossed like acrobats, sloppy, in
our
amphitheater of machines and dreams. So you call a stranger
Dear
or Darling and tell this person all sorts. What bowl you
broke,
the sound it made. What creature you killed with kindness.
About your body and how later today, you'll regret something
else.
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