Catullus Speaks to Clodia Metelli
Here the pleasure and mud-prowl.
We float. Lust-thirst... and drink.
Wolf-runs. Your bared breasts.
Bared teeth. Twitchy-thighed you.
Perfume of rumor. Are you feeling languid?
Is all this a temple to your brassy laughter?
We are the new people we are seeing.
All-nighters when your husband shambles
from town to village... selling spliced wire,
foreclosed villas, blackout candles.
We are star-drugged lovers,
relentless wind and laughter.
It's only pleasure. You stir morning.
Less sleep. My warrior-poet body thins.
The sheen of my seed on your inner thighs,
on your belly, on your breasts, on your lips,
inside your womb, your fists frantic upon my back,
your plum-painted fingernails clawing me closer.
You whisper, We are innocent... dear friends...
only desperate friends tending to quirky pain.
Thrust and thrust and thrust again atop thrust
through the folds of your silk nightgown,
a spear into a new woman of Now-Now-Now, baby.
Your granite bed covered with pillows.
You laugh, This is friendship, the secret gift.
You have not soothed me, Clodia-Lesbia-Clodia.
Yes, we are a measure of more than the mortal nothing.
Your husband shakes my hand at the temple,
asks after my verse, back-slaps me jovially.
You, Clodia-Lebia-Clodia, smirk,
lower mirthful eyes, toy with your long hair
gathered up with pins and needles.
Nakedness and wild desire-frolics.
You are the same as many others before you.
Let me go. Keep me. Let me go.
We are strangers when we meet in town.
Radiant beauty of your husband's refusal to see.
Diverted to and from love by your marriage.
The sun-kissed taste of your flesh.
I am leaving you.
But returning right away.
The blue flame in my heart is for you.
I am running alone. You are running alone.
Azure sky. Cracked daylight moon.
This poem, and a raft of other bio-sketch poems, are presented in a Red Shuttleworth collection of poems, Ghosts& Birthdays (Humanitas Media Publishing, 2012) available via Amazon.
No comments:
Post a Comment