If it pleases you

 Image from here

What will I have you say to me?

I have been in love with you

From the moment our eyes shyly met

I have been in love with you

And longed for you to know

I have been in love with you

and soaked my dreams with you

till they, swollen and saturated,

lay heavy on my chest

We cannot move, they said

until you relieve us

of the burden of your undeclared longing

So, here I am

declaring that

you have the right

No, more than that, the power

No, more than that, the magic

No, more than that, the means

No, more than that, the desire

to wring my dreams dry

so they may soar at once to Heaven

where you and I have reserved a courtyard

drenched with the perfume of a thousand lilies

and adorned by fragile curtains of softly falling snow

and within which, roaring with the warmth of crackling cedar

there burns a voluptuously brilliant fire at the foot of our velvet grass bed

while, for our ears only, the Love Angel plucks ripe notes

off his ancient dulcimer

Just say then, if it pleases you,

that you are in love with me too

If I spoke of Love

I ache for him

I know not why

Despite welcome distractions others provide

unknowing of my torment

it is his soul it seems

that has cleaved with mine

Have I presumed too much

 in thinking that, like me,

he has cowered in the harshness of

unbending conventions

heedless as they are

 of the only law the soul would observe?

What then would he say

if I spoke of love?

How would he feel?

Would it bring unbearably sweet relief to him

as it would to me

were he to declare

in one unguarded moment

(that’s all it would take):

I ache for you too?

Riposte

Oh Fool!

Parade not in the nakedness of Love

Stick instead with the role you know best:

High Prisoner of our necessary fears

and speak

if you do at all

of something uncharged with risk like

a new project

You know

some such banal pretext that

Convention

(Hail Holy Her!)

 would roundly approve!

You are loved

 
If you thought you traveled 

alone

dragging your load

as you do

across the deserts of your

stolen dreams

tossed about wantonly by

furious winds and 

ingratiating high tides

then you can't have seen the magic that has awaited you

day after enchanting day

in the powdered concrete that glistens 

even beneath overcast skies

and upon which you walk 

mind and body apart

or heard the dragon's contented roar

escaping from hurrying cars

that grate and grind past you

or touched the slender waxy tubes

of the fuschia

that have at last fallen to the ground

after their week-long fanfare

Nor would you have tasted 

the slow release of saliva

sweet in its anticipation 

of the marshmallow that will crown the 

frothy hot mocha you order every morning

or felt the feathery caress of the breath of

ten thousand angels 

assigned by Heaven

to be your constant company

and heard them adoringly whisper
again and again and again:

You are loved

As it must

And when this love affair

as we know it

ends, my love,

as all love affairs must

leaving in its place and time

-Infinity and Eternity- 

no less

a yet unexplored Vista

a dungeon of Paradise

a Holy Well of endless depth

unfolding

as it does

from our mother's womb

She who was always 

our first love

returning again and again to it

we will have learned

My Love

that nothing 

ever dies

only transforms 

before our 

slumbered eyes

and within our

yearning souls

according to where we 

take our position

to view ourselves

again and again and again

in this our Paradise