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Heartthrobs
Before the third day,
the day of departure and forgetting,
through half the night
I utter her name,
alternating it with the name of God.
Like Beatrice she smiles at me
her smile of total understanding
and acquiescence.
All night my hands rove
over the same territories of desire
until they are sore,
the same three and a half cubits
of flesh and blood, now warm
and pliant under my electric fingers.
Then she lies quietly in my arms.
On waking I find myself
abandoned in an empty bed
and ah! such desolation of the spirit...
My soul howls like a hyena
it's cry of primeval anguish--
where is my fullness? Who has stolen
my ecstasies? Why is the thorn of love
lodged so deeply in my breast?
As the day smiles on the wreckage of my dreams,
somewhere in the corner of my mind
she still smiles at me
that smile of fixed, vacant sanction
as empty and meaningless
as that of a marionette.
