In the interstices.
Pleasure me not for love, pleasure drained
me deep as an artesian well.
The pitiless blood letter veined me, long grew the parasite
before its fill.
Lover, smile the other way, nor ply me
with evil, who am surfeited and taste the shadows of gray.
Nor sway me with promises to rouse my thirst,
and fill me with that passion beyond lust.
Nor romp my body in the wake of the mind's play.
How tired, how enervated, how becalmed I am.
That island toward which I strove in my salt tides
has drifted out beyond the listless swell
and formed a hostile continent.
I am amorphous with all deflowered brides, who
with their floodgates sundered, drowned when they were stormed.