I'll read some more serious poems now.
And I think I'll start with The Equilibrists.
That is the balance of the people.
Balanced, and yet apart.
The lovers who could not consummate their love.
Full of her long, white arms and milky skin.
He had a thousand times remembered sin.
Alone in the press of people, traveled he.
Minding her jacinth, and myrrh, and ivory.
Mouth, he remembered.
The great orifice from which came
heat that flamed upon the kiss.
To cold words came down spirals from the head.
Gray doves from the officious tower, ill spared.
Body-- it was a white field, ready for love.
On her body's field, with a gaunt tower above,
the lilies grew.
Beseeching him to take, if he would pluck and wear them,
bruise and break.
Eyes talking.
Never mind the cruel words.
Embrace my flowers, but not embrace the swords.
But what they said, the doves came straight with flying,
and unsaid.
Honor, honor they came crying.
Impersonate her doves.
Too pure, too wise.
Clambering on his shoulder saying, Arise, leave me now,
and never let us meet.
Eternal distance now, command thy feet.
Predicament indeed, which such discovers honor among thieves,
honor between lovers.
Oh, such a little word his honor, they feel.
But the great word is between them, cold as steel.
At length I saw these lovers full level
come into their torture of equilibrium.
Dreadfully, had fore-sworn each other.
And yet they were bound each to each, and they did not forget.
And rigid as two painful stars and toiled
about the cloistered night their prison world.
They burned with fierce love always to come near,
but honor beat them back, and kept them clear.
The strict lovers, they are ruined now, I cried in anger.
But with puzzled brow, devising for those devoted and brave,
came a discounting man what would you have?
For spin your period out, and draw your breath.
A kind of speculum begins with death.
Would you ascend to heaven, and bodiless dwell?
Or take your bodies, honorless, to hell.
In heaven, you have heard no marriage is.
No white flesh tender to your lecheries.
Your male and female tissue, sweetly shapes sublimed away.
And furious blood escaped.
Great lovers lie in hell.
The stubborn ones infatuated the flesh upon the bones.
Stoop raped, they rend each other when they kiss.
The pieces kiss again, no end to this.
But still I watch them spinning, orbited nice.
Their flames were not more radiant than their ice.
I dug in the quiet Earth and wrought the tomb.
And made these lines to memorize their doom.
Equlibrists lie here.
Stranger, tread light.
Close, but untouching in each other's sight.
Molded, the lips.
And ashy, the tall skull.
Let them lie-- perilous, and beautiful.