by Jack Clemo
I will not kiss you, country fashion,
By hedgesides where
Weasel and hare
Claim kinship with our passion.
I care no more for fickle moonlight:
Would rather see
Your face touch me
Under a claywork dune-light.
I want no scent or softness round us
When we embrace;
We could not trace
Therein what beauties bound us.
This bare clay-pit is truest setting
For love like ours:
No bed of flowers
But sand-ledge for our petting.
The Spring is not our mating season:
The lift of sap
Would but entrap
Our souls and lead to treason.
This truculent gale, this pang of winter
Awake our joy,
For they employ
Moods that made Calvary splinter.
We need no vague and dreamy fancies:
Care not to sight
The Infinite
In transient necromancies.
No poetry on earth can fasten
Its vampire mouth
Upon our youth:
We know the sly assassin.
We cannot fuse with fallen Nature’s
Our rhythmic tide:
It is allied
With laws beyond the creatures.
Robin's Nest 