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Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short; And done, we straight repent us of the sport: Let us not then rush blindly on unto it, Like lustful beasts, that only know to do it: For lust will languish, and that heat decay. But thus, thus, keeping endless holiday, Let us together closely lie and kiss, There is no labour, nor no shame in this; This hath pleased, doth please, and long will please; never Can this decay, but is beginning ever.

She said she had always wanted to do it; throw away dirty dishes rather than wash them and she did, after breakfast, toss the blue, green, orange, and yellow Fiestaware into the trash. Transferring from New York to Germany with her husband and children, the movers coming that day, she chucked the dishes in among the banana peels, egg shells, coffee grounds, bits of bacon, paper towels and called it good. What she could not know is that a young mother in that very town received a much needed set of tableware when her husband returned home from work that evening. Bright dishes that showed up chipped and grubby like old friends with egg on their faces.

The dryer, uniform and squat as a biscuit tin, came to life and turned on me its insect eye. My t-shirts and underwear crackled and leapt. I was a tourist there; I didn’t speak the language. My shoulders covered themselves up in churches, my tongue soothed its burn with slices of pickle. More I don’t remember: only, weekends now when I stand in the kitchen, sorting sweat pants and pairing socks, I remember the afternoon I did my laundry in Budapest, where the sidewalks bloomed with embroidered linen, where money wasn’t permitted to leave the country. When I close my eyes, I recall that spinning, then a woman, with nothing else to sell, pressing wilted flowers in my hands.

Nay, Doll, quoth Roger, now you're caught, I'll never let you go Till you consent, —To what? says Doll, Zounds, Doll, why, do'stn't know? She faintly screamed, and vowed she would If hurt, cry out aloud; Ne'er fear, says he, then seized the fair, She sighed—and sighed—and vowed,— A'nt I a Man, quoth Roger, ha! Me you need never doubt, Now did I hurt you, Doll? quoth he, Or, pray? says Doll, did I cry out?

They are so like Us, frozen in a bald passion Or absent Gaze, like the cows whose lashes Sag beneath their frail sacks of ice. Your eyes are white with fever, a long Sickness. When you are asleep, Dreaming of another country, the wheat’s Pale surface sliding In the wind, you are walking in every breath Away from me. I gave you a stone doll, Its face a dry apple, wizened, yet untroubled. It taught us the arrogance of silence, How stone and God reward us, how dolls give us Nothing. Look at your cane, Look how even the touch that wears it away Draws up a shine, as the handle Gives to the hand. As a girl, you boiled Your dolls, to keep them clean, presentable; You’d stir them in enormous pots, As the arms and legs bent to those incredible Postures you preferred, not that ordinary, human Pose. How would you like me?— Leaning back, reading aloud from a delirious Book. Or sprawled across your bed, As if I’d been tossed off a high building Into the street, A lesson from a young government to its people. When you are asleep, walking the fields of another Country, a series of shadows slowly falling Away, marking a way, The sky leaning like a curious girl above a new Sister, your face a doll’s deliberate Ache of white, you walk along that grove of madness, Where your mother waits. Hungry, very still. When you are asleep, dreaming of another country, This is the country.

Night after night forever the dolls lay stiff by the children’s dreams. On the goose-feathers of the rich, on the straw of the poor, on the gypsy ground— wherever the children slept, dolls have been found in the subsoil of the small loves stirred again by the Finders After Everything. Down lay the children by their hanks and twists. Night after night grew over imagination. The fuzzies shed, the bright buttons fell out of the heads, arms ripped, and down through goose-feathers, straw; and the gypsy ground the dolls sank, and some—the fuzziest and most loved changed back to string and dust, and the dust moved dream-puffs round the Finders’ boots as they dug, sieved, brushed, and came on a little clay dog, and a little stone man, and a little bone girl, that had kept their eyes wide open forever, while all the children slept.

Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour; The heavy white limbs, and the cruel Red mouth like a venomous flower; When these are gone by with their glories, What shall rest of thee then, what remain, O mystic and sombre Dolores, Our Lady of Pain? Seven sorrows the priests give their Virgin; But thy sins, which are seventy times seven, Seven ages would fail thee to purge in, And then they would haunt thee in heaven: Fierce midnights and famishing morrows, And the loves that complete and control All the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows That wear out the soul. O garment not golden but gilded, O garden where all men may dwell, O tower not of ivory, but builded By hands that reach heaven from hell; O mystical rose of the mire, O house not of gold but of gain, O house of unquenchable fire, Our Lady of Pain! O lips full of lust and of laughter, Curled snakes that are fed from my breast, Bite hard, lest remembrance come after And press with new lips where you pressed. For my heart too springs up at the pressure, Mine eyelids too moisten and burn; Ah, feed me and fill me with pleasure, Ere pain come in turn. In yesterday's reach and to-morrow's, Out of sight though they lie of to-day, There have been and there yet shall be sorrows That smite not and bite not in play. The life and the love thou despisest, These hurt us indeed, and in vain, O wise among women, and wisest, Our Lady of Pain. Who gave thee thy wisdom? what stories That stung thee, what visions that smote? Wert thou pure and a maiden, Dolores, When desire took thee first by the throat? What bud was the shell of a blossom That all men may smell to and pluck? What milk fed thee first at what bosom? What sins gave thee suck? We shift and bedeck and bedrape us, Thou art noble and nude and antique; Libitina thy mother, Priapus Thy father, a Tuscan and Greek. We play with light loves in the portal, And wince and relent and refrain; Loves die, and we know thee immortal, Our Lady of Pain. Fruits fail and love dies and time ranges; Thou art fed with perpetual breath, And alive after infinite changes, And fresh from the kisses of death; Of languors rekindled and rallied, Of barren delights and unclean, Things monstrous and fruitless, a pallid And poisonous queen. Could you hurt me, sweet lips, though I hurt you? Men touch them, and change in a trice The lilies and languors of virtue For the raptures and roses of vice; Those lie where thy foot on the floor is, These crown and caress thee and chain, O splendid and sterile Dolores, Our Lady of Pain. There are sins it may be to discover, There are deeds it may be to delight. What new work wilt thou find for thy lover, What new passions for daytime or night? What spells that they know not a word of Whose lives are as leaves overblown? What tortures undreamt of, unheard of, Unwritten, unknown? Ah beautiful passionate body That never has ached with a heart! On thy mouth though the kisses are bloody, Though they sting till it shudder and smart, More kind than the love we adore is, They hurt not the heart or the brain, O bitter and tender Dolores, Our Lady of Pain. As our kisses relax and redouble, From the lips and the foam and the fangs Shall no new sin be born for men's trouble, No dream of impossible pangs? With the sweet of the sins of old ages Wilt thou satiate thy soul as of yore? Too sweet is the rind, say the sages, Too bitter the core. Hast thou told all thy secrets the last time, And bared all thy beauties to one? Ah, where shall we go then for pastime, If the worst that can be has been done? But sweet as the rind was the core is; We are fain of thee still, we are fain, O sanguine and subtle Dolores, Our Lady of Pain. By the hunger of change and emotion, By the thirst of unbearable things, By despair, the twin-born of devotion, By the pleasure that winces and stings, The delight that consumes the desire, The desire that outruns the delight, By the cruelty deaf as a fire And blind as the night, By the ravenous teeth that have smitten Through the kisses that blossom and bud, By the lips intertwisted and bitten Till the foam has a savour of blood, By the pulse as it rises and falters, By the hands as they slacken and strain, I adjure thee, respond from thine altars, Our Lady of Pain. Wilt thou smile as a woman disdaining The light fire in the veins of a boy? But he comes to thee sad, without feigning, Who has wearied of sorrow and joy; Less careful of labour and glory Than the elders whose hair has uncurled: And young, but with fancies as hoary And grey as the world. I have passed from the outermost portal To the shrine where a sin is a prayer; What care though the service be mortal? O our Lady of Torture, what care? All thine the last wine that I pour is, The last in the chalice we drain, O fierce and luxurious Dolores, Our Lady of Pain. All thine the new wine of desire, The fruit of four lips as they clung Till the hair and the eyelids took fire, The foam of a serpentine tongue, The froth of the serpents of pleasure, More salt than the foam of the sea, Now felt as a flame, now at leisure As wine shed for me. Ah thy people, thy children, thy chosen, Marked cross from the womb and perverse! They have found out the secret to cozen The gods that constrain us and curse; They alone, they are wise, and none other; Give me place, even me, in their train, O my sister, my spouse, and my mother, Our Lady of Pain. For the crown of our life as it closes Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose's, And love is more cruel than lust. Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives. And pale from the past we draw nigh thee, And satiate with comfortless hours; And we know thee, how all men belie thee, And we gather the fruit of thy flowers; The passion that slays and recovers, The pangs and the kisses that rain On the lips and the limbs of thy lovers, Our Lady of Pain. The desire of thy furious embraces Is more than the wisdom of years, On the blossom though blood lie in traces, Though the foliage be sodden with tears. For the lords in whose keeping the door is That opens on all who draw breath Gave the cypress to love, my Dolores, The myrtle to death. And they laughed, changing hands in the measure, And they mixed and made peace after strife; Pain melted in tears, and was pleasure; Death tingled with blood, and was life. Like lovers they melted and tingled, In the dusk of thine innermost fane; In the darkness they murmured and mingled, Our Lady of Pain. In a twilight where virtues are vices, In thy chapels, unknown of the sun, To a tune that enthralls and entices, They were wed, and the twain were as one. For the tune from thine altar hath sounded Since God bade the world's work begin, And the fume of thine incense abounded, To sweeten the sin. Love listens, and paler than ashes, Through his curls as the crown on them slips, Lifts languid wet eyelids and lashes, And laughs with insatiable lips. Thou shalt hush him with heavy caresses, With music that scares the profane; Thou shalt darken his eyes with thy tresses, Our Lady of Pain. Thou shalt blind his bright eyes though he wrestle, Thou shalt chain his light limbs though he strive; In his lips all thy serpents shall nestle, In his hands all thy cruelties thrive. In the daytime thy voice shall go through him, In his dreams he shall feel thee and ache; Thou shalt kindle by night and subdue him Asleep and awake. Thou shalt touch and make redder his roses With juice not of fruit nor of bud; When the sense in the spirit reposes, Thou shalt quicken the soul through the blood. Thine, thine the one grace we implore is, Who would live and not languish or feign, O sleepless and deadly Dolores, Our Lady of Pain. Dost thou dream, in a respite of slumber, In a lull of the fires of thy life, Of the days without name, without number, When thy will stung the world into strife; When, a goddess, the pulse of thy passion Smote kings as they revelled in Rome; And they hailed thee re-risen, O Thalassian, Foam-white, from the foam? When thy lips had such lovers to flatter; When the city lay red from thy rods, And thine hands were as arrows to scatter The children of change and their gods; When the blood of thy foemen made fervent A sand never moist from the main, As one smote them, their lord and thy servant, Our Lady of Pain. On sands by the storm never shaken, Nor wet from the washing of tides; Nor by foam of the waves overtaken, Nor winds that the thunder bestrides; But red from the print of thy paces, Made smooth for the world and its lords, Ringed round with a flame of fair faces, And splendid with swords. There the gladiator, pale for thy pleasure, Drew bitter and perilous breath; There torments laid hold on the treasure Of limbs too delicious for death; When thy gardens were lit with live torches; When the world was a steed for thy rein; When the nations lay prone in thy porches, Our Lady of Pain. When, with flame all around him aspirant, Stood flushed, as a harp-player stands, The implacable beautiful tyrant, Rose-crowned, having death in his hands; And a sound as the sound of loud water Smote far through the flight of the fires, And mixed with the lightning of slaughter A thunder of lyres. Dost thou dream of what was and no more is, The old kingdoms of earth and the kings? Dost thou hunger for these things, Dolores, For these, in a world of new things? But thy bosom no fasts could emaciate, No hunger compel to complain Those lips that no bloodshed could satiate, Our Lady of Pain. As of old when the world's heart was lighter, Through thy garments the grace of thee glows, The white wealth of thy body made whiter By the blushes of amorous blows, And seamed with sharp lips and fierce fingers, And branded by kisses that bruise; When all shall be gone that now lingers, Ah, what shall we lose? Thou wert fair in the fearless old fashion, And thy limbs are as melodies yet, And move to the music of passion With lithe and lascivious regret. What ailed us, O gods, to desert you For creeds that refuse and restrain? Come down and redeem us from virtue, Our Lady of Pain. All shrines that were Vestal are flameless, But the flame has not fallen from this; Though obscure be the god, and though nameless The eyes and the hair that we kiss; Low fires that love sits by and forges Fresh heads for his arrows and thine; Hair loosened and soiled in mid orgies With kisses and wine. Thy skin changes country and colour, And shrivels or swells to a snake's. Let it brighten and bloat and grow duller, We know it, the flames and the flakes, Red brands on it smitten and bitten, Round skies where a star is a stain, And the leaves with thy litanies written, Our Lady of Pain. On thy bosom though many a kiss be, There are none such as knew it of old. Was it Alciphron once or Arisbe, Male ringlets or feminine gold, That thy lips met with under the statue, Whence a look shot out sharp after thieves From the eyes of the garden-god at you Across the fig-leaves? Then still, through dry seasons and moister, One god had a wreath to his shrine; Then love was the pearl of his oyster, And Venus rose red out of wine. We have all done amiss, choosing rather Such loves as the wise gods disdain; Intercede for us thou with thy father, Our Lady of Pain. In spring he had crowns of his garden, Red corn in the heat of the year, Then hoary green olives that harden When the grape-blossom freezes with fear; And milk-budded myrtles with Venus And vine-leaves with Bacchus he trod; And ye said, "We have seen, he hath seen us, A visible God." What broke off the garlands that girt you? What sundered you spirit and clay? Weak sins yet alive are as virtue To the strength of the sins of that day. For dried is the blood of thy lover, Ipsithilla, contracted the vein; Cry aloud, "Will he rise and recover, Our Lady of Pain?" Cry aloud; for the old world is broken: Cry out; for the Phrygian is priest, And rears not the bountiful token And spreads not the fatherly feast. From the midmost of Ida, from shady Recesses that murmur at morn, They have brought and baptized her, Our Lady, A goddess new-born. And the chaplets of old are above us, And the oyster-bed teems out of reach; Old poets outsing and outlove us, And Catullus makes mouths at our speech. Who shall kiss, in thy father's own city, With such lips as he sang with, again? Intercede for us all of thy pity, Our Lady of Pain. Out of Dindymus heavily laden Her lions draw bound and unfed A mother, a mortal, a maiden, A queen over death and the dead. She is cold, and her habit is lowly, Her temple of branches and sods; Most fruitful and virginal, holy, A mother of gods. She hath wasted with fire thine high places, She hath hidden and marred and made sad The fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces Of gods that were goodly and glad. She slays, and her hands are not bloody; She moves as a moon in the wane, White-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy, Our Lady of Pain. They shall pass and their places be taken, The gods and the priests that are pure. They shall pass, and shalt thou not be shaken? They shall perish, and shalt thou endure? Death laughs, breathing close and relentless In the nostrils and eyelids of lust, With a pinch in his fingers of scentless And delicate dust. But the worm shall revive thee with kisses; Thou shalt change and transmute as a god, As the rod to a serpent that hisses, As the serpent again to a rod. Thy life shall not cease though thou doff it; Thou shalt live until evil be slain, And good shall die first, said thy prophet, Our Lady of Pain. Did he lie? did he laugh? does he know it, Now he lies out of reach, out of breath, Thy prophet, thy preacher, thy poet, Sin's child by incestuous Death? Did he find out in fire at his waking, Or discern as his eyelids lost light, When the bands of the body were breaking And all came in sight? Who has known all the evil before us, Or the tyrannous secrets of time? Though we match not the dead men that bore us At a song, at a kiss, at a crime — Though the heathen outface and outlive us, And our lives and our longings are twain — Ah, forgive us our virtues, forgive us, Our Lady of Pain. Who are we that embalm and embrace thee With spices and savours of song? What is time, that his children should face thee? What am I, that my lips do thee wrong? I could hurt thee — but pain would delight thee; Or caress thee — but love would repel; And the lovers whose lips would excite thee Are serpents in hell. Who now shall content thee as they did, Thy lovers, when temples were built And the hair of the sacrifice braided And the blood of the sacrifice spilt, In Lampsacus fervent with faces, In Aphaca red from thy reign, Who embraced thee with awful embraces, Our Lady of Pain? Where are they, Cotytto or Venus, Astarte or Ashtaroth, where? Do their hands as we touch come between us? Is the breath of them hot in thy hair? From their lips have thy lips taken fever, With the blood of their bodies grown red? Hast thou left upon earth a believer If these men are dead? They were purple of raiment and golden, Filled full of thee, fiery with wine, Thy lovers, in haunts unbeholden, In marvellous chambers of thine. They are fled, and their footprints escape us, Who appraise thee, adore, and abstain, O daughter of Death and Priapus, Our Lady of Pain. What ails us to fear overmeasure, To praise thee with timorous breath, O mistress and mother of pleasure, The one thing as certain as death? We shall change as the things that we cherish, Shall fade as they faded before, As foam upon water shall perish, As sand upon shore. We shall know what the darkness discovers, If the grave-pit be shallow or deep; And our fathers of old, and our lovers, We shall know if they sleep not or sleep. We shall see whether hell be not heaven, Find out whether tares be not grain, And the joys of thee seventy times seven, Our Lady of Pain.

Inward lush unpetaling purpose in pink blooms of sleep, and I no longer needed to be separate. I was living there then, at the edge of the sea. And my friends came to visit, trying for a baby, not sure how to read me on that island of dozy sunlight. And there it was: familiarity edged with fear, the way we’d feed each other sandwiches and wonder if we should have wanted something other. We walked the folded cliffs over conifer fronds and mud runneling rocks slick with dropped fruit and rotting camellias to pause at the first ridge. We looked through high pines at the blue moving tides, then his finger caught a snag in the water and another and we saw — glinting fins wheeling the sheen, thousands playing in pods coming closer like the souls slippering into our bodies, attaching to matter as flippers angle into a ferrying strand. We too are a species, I realized. We too could know that as joy.

With focus sharp as Flemish-painted face In film of varnish brightly fixed And through a polished hand-lens deeply seen, Sunday at noon through hyaline thin air Sees down the street, And in the camera of my eye depicts Row-houses and row-lives: Glass after glass, door after door the same, Face after face the same, the same, The brutal visibility the same; As if one life emerging from one house Would pause, a single image caught between Two facing mirrors where vision multiplies Beyond perspective, A silent clatter in the high-speed eye Spinning out photo-circulars of sight. I see slip to the curb the long machines Out of whose warm and windowed rooms pirouette Shellacked with silk and light The hard legs of our women. Our women are one woman, dressed in black. The carmine printed mouth And cheeks as soft as muslin-glass belong Outright to one dark dressy man, Merely a swagger at her curvy side. This is their visit to themselves: All day from porch to porch they weave A nonsense pattern through the even glare, Stealing in surfaces Cold vulgar glances at themselves. And high up in the heated room all day I wait behind the plate glass pane for one, Hot as a voyeur for a glimpse of one, The vision to blot out this woman’s sheen; All day my sight records expensively Row-houses and row-lives. But nothing happens; no diagonal With melting shadow falls across the curb: Neither the blinded negress lurching through fatigue, Nor exiles bleeding from their pores, Nor that bright bomb slipped lightly from its rack To splinter every silvered glass and crystal prism, Witch-bowl and perfume bottle And billion candle-power dressing-bulb, No direct hit to smash the shatter-proof And lodge at last the quivering needle Clean in the eye of one who stands transfixed In fascination of her brightness.

for John Godfrey 1. Animals Carved—indicated, actually, from solid Blocks of wood, the copper-, cream-, and chocolate-colored Cows we bought in Salzburg form a tiny herd. And in Dr. Gachet’s etching, six Or seven universal poses are assumed by cats. Misery, hypocrisy, greed: A dying Mouse, a cat, and a flock of puzzled blackbirds wearing Uniforms and frock coats exhibit these traits. Formally outlasting the motive Of their creation with a poetry at once too vague And too precise to do anything with but Worship, they seem to have just blundered into our lives By accident, completely comprehending Everything we find so disturbing About them; but they never speak. They never even move From the positions in which Grandville or some Anonymous movie-poster artist has left them, A sort of ghostly wolf, a lizard, an ape And a huge dog. And their eyes, looking At nothing, manage to see everything invisible To ours, even with all the time in the world To see everything we think we have to see. And tell Of this in the only way we really can: With a remark as mild as the air In which it is to be left hanging; or a stiff scream, Folded like a sheet of paper over all The horrible memories of everything we were Going to have. That vanished before our eyes As we woke up to nothing but these, Our words, poor animals whose home is in another world. 2. Summer Home Tiny outbursts of sunlight play On the tips of waves that look like tacks Strewn on the surface of the bay. Up the coast the water backs up Behind a lofty, wooded island. Here, According to photographs, it is less Turbulent and blue; but much clearer. It seems to exercise the sunlight less Reflecting it, allowing beaten silver sheets To roam like water across a kitchen floor. Having begun gradually, the gravel beach Ends abruptly in the forest on the shore. Looked at from a distance, the forest seems Haunted. But safe within its narrow room Its light is innocent and green, as though Emerging from another dream of diminution We found ourselves of normal, human size, Attempting to touch the leaves above our heads. Why couldn’t we have spent our summers here, Surrounded and growing up again? Or perhaps Arrive here late at night by car, much later In life? If only heaven were not too near For such sadness. And not within this world Which heaven has finally made clear. Green lichen fastened to a blue rock Like a map of the spot; cobwebs crowded with stars Of water; battalions of small white flowers. Such clarity, unrelieved except by our Delight and daily acquiescence in it, Presumably the effect of a natural setting Like this one, with all its expectations of ecstasy And peace, demands a future of forgetting Everything that sustains it: the dead leaves Of winter; the new leaves of spring which summer burns Into different kinds of happiness; for these, When autumn drops its tear upon them, turn. 3. Domes “Pleased in proportion to the truth Depicted by means of familiar images.” That One was dazed; the other I left in a forest Surrounded by giant, sobering pines. For I had to abandon those lives. Their burden of living had become Mine and it was like dying: alone, Huddled under the cold blue dome of the stars, Still fighting what died and so close to myself I could not even see. I kept trying to look at myself. It was like looking into the sun and I went blind. O, to break open that inert light Like a stone and let the vision slowly sink down Into the texture of things, like a comb flowing through dark, Heavy hair; and to continue to be affected much later. I was getting so tired of that excuse: refusing love Until it might become so closely mated to its birth in Acts and words of love; until a soft monstrosity of song Might fuse these moments of affection with a dream of home; The cold, prolonged proximity of God long after night Has come and only starlight trickles through the dome; And yet I only wanted to be happy. I wanted rest and innocence; a place Where I could hide each secret fear by blessing it, By letting it survive inside those faces I could never understand, Love, or bear to leave. Because I wanted peace, bruised with prayer I tried to crawl inside the heavy, slaughtered hands of love And never move. And then I felt the wound unfold inside me Like a stab of paradise: explode: and then at last Exhausted, heal into pain. And that was happiness: A dream whose ending never ends, a vein Of blood, a hollow entity Consumed by consummation, bleeding so. In the sky our eyes ascend to as they sweep Upwards into emptiness, the angels sing their listless Lullabies and children wake up glistening with screams They left asleep; and the dead are dead. The wounded worship death And live a little while in love; and then are gone. Inside the dome the stars assume the outlines of their lives: Until we know, until we come to recognize as ours, Those other lives that live within us as our own.