SONNET OF THE GARLAND OF ROSES

That garland! Hurry! Grievous is the pain!
Weave it quickly! Sing and groan and sing!
How this darkness makes my gullet sting
and January's light still comes again.

For what you want of me and I of you,
a gust of stars and trembling greeneries,
there grows a thicket of anemones
where dark groans block it out the whole year through.

Enjoy the cooling landscape of my wound.
Break down the reeds and stamp where streams would wind,
and drink from honeyed thigh the welling blood.

But quick, before united, intertwined,
with broken mouths and souls chewed up by love
we are destroyed by the eternal power of Time.