Post by willowdown on Dec 28, 2008 21:15:04 GMT -5
I lay with the corpse of old love
upon this bed of autumn leaves
and decaying blossoms
wherein pale worms and maggots breed
and feed upon desire's final
wind-cast seed.
I caress the last thin strands
of pallid golden hair
still clinging to your grinning skull,
once a living, fragrant stair
I climbed to perfumed, bright-eyed heaven
but now only ghouls and demons dare
to scale the fragile winding thread
to kiss the thing that's nested there
and I, perchance, am one of them,
that presses still my hungry lips
to the tattered rags of rotten flesh
that still adhere to your jaw,
unmindful of the fat white thing
that blindly peers from out their door.
Your bones are spiky and sharp, my love,
not as comfortable or as giving
as the young and subtle flesh you used to wear
when you were still living;
your breasts, your slim waist,
your girlish hips are no more
- upon your head no circlet fair
of finely beaten gold
but a cold and lichened crown
of verdigris and hoar.
Once you smelled of roses and lilac-skied dusks
on long tropical shores where silver surf
crashed endlessly onto warm golden sands:
now you reek of pestilence and days gone by
or carelessly dropped from palsied hands
of the beauty of orchids imprisoned and tortured
in a long drawn-out and poisoned sigh
and yet, and yet, still I cannot say goodbye
to the charnel stench of corruption and
endless regret; even as your terrible corpse
drags me deeper and deeper into the infernal pit
I cannot say I wish we had not ever met
and renew each night, when the sun has set,
the ancient tryst that binds us still
with a dark and bloodless kiss...
Pattaya 1998/2008
