The darlings perish,
dolor shows her face,
fog settles like a veil,
the flaxen vise moves
from limb to limb,
all the simple flowers
cry and are gone.
And gone, the sacrament
of his love and
her returning of it.
The white pattern
of his seed,
stiff on the dragontail
slithering her collar,
slate-pale on the bands
enticing her nervous
wrists. He sleeps
beside her, his
absence that she puts
her arms around
but cannot contain,
wraps her legs around
but cannot arouse.
Cold spell in early
spring no longer
pleases her, nor
does he work her
in a heap of quilts,
the subtle flowering
of awful, utter love.
The shaken fruit
which afterwards she
wombed, in sleep, in
bowsprit and foam,
the moonstone passage
of love’s diadem.