au naturelle

   Love Affair                                                                 

The sun sees many flowers,  but the flower sees only the sun:
Blinded three parts of the day,  or dark all dark,
Uneasy, cold,  attentive for release,
He crouches through the night,  or burns and swells
Blindly as in a kind of hurt of love.
They call it blossoming.  The unwieldy earth
Clamps round,  his sap strained and petals shrunk.

And nothing is said.  The sun moves on above
Indifferent,  raging in its own sweet fire
And light, light, light,  the flower twists for it,
Straining its mouth for death,  which it calls love.
‘A God has come upon me’,  gapes the flower
As over the lip of the earth the sun sinks down.
The moon swings to and fro between the trees
Its casual, icy fire.  The first leaves fall.

                                             A. Alvarez






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