Collected Poems
Love in the Night
Love in the Night
We are two skeletons who sleep
like lovers darkly in a grave;
along our bones the shadows creep
as rats about a burial cave.
This darkness is the womb of life
and soon with flesh our bones grow warm,
yet still we are but man and wife,
each yet endures a separate form.
Next flesh commingles with sweet fire
from heaven, and mind springs from the air,
the elements bring forth desire,
and then I know your body fair.
Into my waiting heart life pours
resistless power: a blinding arc
of light springs from my loins to yours
and tiger-like devours the dark.
In love's vast instant time's annulled,
we in that instant are made one,
and in our commerce is fulfilled
the motion of the stars and sun.