Saturday, November 6, 2010

All Yours

I’m all yours, Edna, you have it all.
I’m all yours, Louise, you have all
my all. I’m all yours, Elinor, your
baby forever, Millay, Bogan, Wylie
much less Sara Teasdale, Leonie
Adams, and all I am is yours.
Edna’s rhymes, images of Louise,
Elinor’s curves, Sara’s seductions,
Leonie’s metaphysics. "What thou
lovest well remains." I met only
Adams–whose wit easily equaled
Millay’s elegiacs, Bogan’s lyrics,
Wylie’s tongue, Teasdale’s tease.
Leonie Adams said, I married a man
named Freud. Call him William
Troy: he was the one who rode away
on his son’s back, off to see Dido
and spurn her, his son was a saint
compared to his father’s cold eye
that with Antony seduced Cleo
in her bath and gave her a son,
or daughter, sex doesn’t matter,
only in bed not in the bassinet.
When you stray, dear one, come
home, I’ll pour my love into all
you’ve left for me and what I have
is less as well but that’s no matter,
all of the old man’s beloved whores
are dead, and he the greatest whore
of all, going to his knees to pray
with every breath how grateful
he was to have a body and breath
to give God whose name is woman
if you are on your knees where she
demurred from being and stood up
–or was it he–with enormous love
and with incoming tide to lave
what we call flesh and know
beyond knowing is all you have
to give and give again and again
for what it is, we know, is all yours.

(12 October 2010)

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