The Summer Ending

Lick your lips, X. darling, it may be the last-

The last seedy sunshine feather deflowered bowers

Idling thighs of light bedded in grasses,

As long as we live, at least the last for hours.

Storm is formulating, black and blue and proud.

Is it end, is it interim, how can you tell

When the weather changes? It works fast ;

The leaf the nest the balm bombed by cloud.

Which is the way love also alas passes:

Jealousy then conscience then unfaithful habit.

Hush, we were fortunate formerly, never say farewell.

See there, the nauseated boughs, under them weeping rabbit.

Of summery love-affair, perhaps before long no wonder

Amid annual drama the bond between us may ripely snap.

Air! glare less beautifully, or else hurry up, thunder!

X. dear, ex-dear, give me a kiss before it really rains.

Thanks, and for all my felicity in recent years, thanks.

Say safe things, say this is nothing but breathing-spell, oh

Nonsense, it is a labyrinth of stale atmospheres, a trap.

See how vegetable, animal, with soft paw salutes its fellow-

Whereas this glassy afternoon we are only bright-eyed brains,

Perfervid, like a pair of fighting-fish in twin tanks.

[306] ,

The sky looks liverish, then brownly wrinkles, then weeps,

Heaves a sigh: which sigh dampened with single drops

As we inhale it, slides into the lung like a dagger.

Warlike little winds in the dust arm and stamp,

Shrub throbs, the recumbent light's flesh creeps,

Green giants, oaks, on lame shadows all stagger,

The honeycombed horizon festers, and unfinished crops

In whipped warm fields lie down and implore.

Love with its over-exercised senses in fond cramp

Leaves us worse off than we were before.

What was all of a piece, now our intellects acutely part.

Through the pink of each cheek, the form loosely voluminous,

Each beholds the bone of the other's beloved head.

The healing concupiscent fit may not occur again in us.

I hiss in disappointment, your discipline of me is blunder-

As lightning lets fly in sensitive tree its golden witticism

And laggard along after it comes the thunder:

Nagging or warning, domestic, like a palpitating heart.

The hot sod under us creaks, reminiscent of the laborious bed

On which our young characters grew as in a cradle.

Now our kiss grows brotherly but love remains fatal.

Now lover hits lover, in loathing, in fright of criticism.