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(From Poems, 1919)
I WANT of you not this intellectual passion | |
| Always consciously composing its code | |
| Of liberties! considerations! | |
| Nor this reasonable loftiness, | |
| Treating each circumstance with oratorical gestures | 5 |
| Toward some invisible public. | |
| Nor do I exact this fraternal fairness | |
| In sexual emergency— | |
| Nor even this cerebral impartiality | |
| In passional disaster— | 10 |
| Phew, such attitudes savouring to me | |
| Of affectation masking depleted instinct, | |
| Or of egomania parading as a new charity. | |
| Listen! I want your mouth whispering over my heart | |
| “This complete moment | 15 |
| Is moulding us eternally together!” | |
| I want our limbs, twisted, luminous, | |
| Crushing the physical into spiritual invocation, | |
| Commingling! Ascending! | |
| Nor afterward any slamming down of the lid | 20 |
| Upon emerging spirit. | |
| Since I desire that consummation become a beginning, | |
| A beginning, stammering our souls with tenderness, | |
| Inflating us with moods palpitating— | |
| Disconcerting—mysterious—as dreams— | 25 |
| Moods confessional—adventurous, | |
| Flickering our fancy with spectre forms | |
| Triumphant—transcendant—angelic— | |
| Since I admonish consummation to become a beginning, | |
| And so mortal love, the legitimate mediator | 30 |
| Between God and Man. | |
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