The Priest Says Goodbye

My love, the song is less than sung
When with your lips you take
It from my tongue -
Nor can you seize this firm erotic grace
And halt it tumbling into commonplace

No one I know can set the hook
To fix lust in a longing look
Where we can read from time to time
The absolute ballet our bodies mime

Harry can't, his face in Sally's crotch
Nor Tom
Who only loves when neighbours watch -
One mistakes the ballet for the chart
One hopes that gossip will perform like art

And what of art? When passion dies
Friendship hovers round our flesh like flies
And we name beautiful the smells
That corpses give and immortelles

I have studied rivers: the waters rush
Like eternal fire in Moses' bush
Some things live with honour i will see
Lust burn like fire in a holy tree

Do not come with me when I stand alone
My voice sings out as though I did not own
My throat abelard proved how bright could be
The bed between the hermitage and nunnery
You are beautiful i will sing beside
Rivers where longing Hebrews cried
As separate exiles we can learn
How desert trees ignite and branches burn

At certain crossroads we will win
The harvest of our discipline
Swollen flesh, minds fed on wilderness -
O what a blaze of love our bodies press!