I'd like to read a poem from a sequence of poems
called "Caritas".
Caritas is the Latin origin of our words care, charisma,
and cherish.
And the poems are preceded by a quote
from the Seneca tribe of Native Americans
who say, "Thank someone for being that one.
Walk with her to the center of a place
and back again singing a little song.
Burn something."
Erik Satie, accused once of formlessness,
composed the Sonata titled, "Composition
in the Form of a Pear".
When I tell you that it would take
more brilliance than Mozart, more melancholy precision
than Brahms, to compose a Sonata in the form of your breasts
you don't believe me.
I lie next to your infidel sleep all night and pain
and lonely with my silence pleasure.
Your breasts in their moonlit pallor
invade me lightly like minor fugues.
I lie between your sapling thighs,
tongue flat on your double lips, giving voice, giving voice.
Opulent as a continent in the rising
light you sleep on indifferent to my gushing praises.
It is as it should be.
Atlantis, Cyprus, Crete, the encircled civilization serene
and their tidal basins dolphin-loved,
didn't heed to the faint the riotous praise
of the lapping sea.