New Song

After William IX, Duke of Aquitaine As sweetness flows through these new days, the woods leaf out, and songbirds phrase in neumes of roosted melody incipits to a new song. Then love should find lubricity and quicken, having slept so long. The bloodroot blossoms, well and good, but I receive no word that would set my troubled heart at ease, nor could we turn our faces toward the sun, and open by degrees, unless we reach a clear accord. And so our love goes, night and day: it’s like the thorny hawthorn spray that whips about in a bitter wind from dusk to dawn, shellacked with sleet, until the sun’s first rays ascend through leaves and branches, spreading heat. I have in mind one April morning when she relented without warning, relenting from her cold rebuff in laughter, peals of happiness. Sweet Christ, let me live long enough to get my hands beneath her dress! I hate the elevated talk that disregards both root and stalk and sets insipid pride above vicissitudes of lust and strife. Let others claim a higher love: we’ve got the bread, we’ve got the knife.