All Islands

She knows her love is deadlier than hate;

Therefore she loves. Therefore I am her fool.

Therefore her madrigals. The witless birds

Brush with bright wings a countenance of their god,

Discountenancing all except the words

Flung up like incense by an aging bawd,

Discounting in advance the palinode

An old man might recite while tumbling birds

Flaunt their bright folly in the face of God.

ALL ISLANDS

All islands have their seas, that sometimes drown

The innocent adventurers who come,

Armored, alone, always with troublesome

Claims to be somebody else, claiming a crown,

To find the kingdom they can founder on,

The perfect Sunday dinner they have dreamed

Of all their lives.

To islands come

Tall insularities, storming at dawn

Across their sandy shame, imagining

Rich islands oblate in a sun of love,

Fecund beyond despair, delivering.

They find, perhaps, a little patch of ground,

Enough to die for, little enough to love,

Wild and still as the seas where islands drown.