pleasure

Cleopatra

After Pushkin via Louis Martinez

The palace was fire. A choir sang
ringing with flute-sound and lyre.
The Queen’s glance, and her voice
were the soul of a great feast.
All hearts inclined to the throne.
So, golden bowl in hand, the Queen
looked taken by dreams, and drooped
her beautiful head toward the ground –
the royal feast seemed to calm
and the hosts shut up. And the choir.
That’s when, again, she looked up
and said, her face bathed in milky light:
< My love is your sovereign joy. >
< A sovereign joy you can buy… >
< Listen. It’s mine alone to do: >
< give you all one equal opportunity. >
< Who here’s a buyer? My love’s in play >
< I’m putting it up for bids – let’s see >
< who among you is ready to pay >
< with your life for one night spent with me? >
She spoke. Fear took them all,
as a passion stuttered their hearts.
Enduring a muddled rumour which rose
of a face that was icy with pride –
she let run a disgusted look
round her circle of adorers…
Now, someone came from the ranks
soon followed by two others,
their step was daring, their eyes glowing
and the Queen rose, walking to meet them.
The game was set, three nights were bought
and death’s bed was opened to them…

…………

Immediately, blessed by the priests
the three lots, one after another,
were drawn from the fatal urn
in front of the silent guests.
Flavius came first. A robust soldier,
veteran of the Roman legions.
He twitched to see in a woman
so much arrogance and disdain.
He went to her bed’s challenge
like in old days, in his campaigns,
he’d gone to the call of battle.
Then came Crito, a young intellectual
raised in Epicurean groves
Crito, the adept, the poet
of the Graces, of Cypress, of love
whose eyes, and heart, were kind –
flower of a springtime barely begun.
History has forgotten the name
of the third. A short and soft fur
tenderly shadowed his cheeks.
Desire illuminated his eyes –
a hot and clumsy force
boiling in his young heart…
It was on him that rested
the saddened gaze of the Queen.

…………

< I swear, as Queen of pleasures
I will worship them beyond anything tried
and make myself play courtesan
in this game-of-love challenge.
Listen, oh powerful Cyprus
and you, infernal sovereigns
oh gods of fearsome Hades –
I swear to you that before the dawn
I will exhaust their desires,
their burning pleasures, my masters;
I will quench them, opening to them
the mystery of my strokes –
The divine secrets of pleasure –
but as soon as the eternal dawn
shines its morning purple –
this is an oath – their pleased little heads
will bounce under an axe. >

…………

Now the day is blown out,
the moon rises all horny and gold
and a delicious shadow fills
the whole Alexandrian palace –
where spurts of water and lamps glitter –
where a hot smoke of incense rises –
where they ready the gods of the earth
for the smoothest of pleasures.
There, in a dark and luxurious cavern
full of half-miracles of art,
under the shade of purple curtains
waits the gold and royal bed…

1828

Against Metaphysics

Do not debase yourself – you are gold, and you know
you need only find the ones who will hold you as standard.
And see how we die, how we weren’t designed for this living;
or designed at all, apart from a certain sketching.
This earthly fact need not ashcut our hair with sorrow,
though of course it may do for a moment, a haunting phase:
learning the blood and the tears that rest in salvation
not dropped from above, in a white hot holy inferno
of passionate revenge. No, these great tears are ours
believer, as we bear up the world on our backs, and build
our commune here on earth, our only connection
where we tie our authority, where we decide on our lives.
Not alone; these golden souls around us glimmer
as we pile together in a vast open treasure of days:
supporting each other as water clings to cold water
thundering slow as a star, and frantic reshaping
it glints – over the falls and out into darkness;
this thunder is pure, this thunder is gold in its forging.
Our blood belongs too, born in a mythical foundation
of life in the dawning of sacred human electrics –
we do not need more, we only need thriving, and others
a group of bright people called wonders who help us our way
to shore up our breathing, our justifiable madness
at having to live in a world that we have made,
which teaches us we lack the spinning centre: We.
The people who beat the heart of humanity’s pace?
This is the horror, the shock and the shame of those
who project with intensity, blinding sovereign light
on the walls to blind us, this is why it takes time –
so learn we can float, calm on our backs in the sea
of a disc, on the back of four elephants, looming calm
on the back of a turtle, ponderous floating through space.
And yes there is violence, but here in the gaps inbetween,
which like air are so hard to avoid, and yet so hard to see
lie the softer gradients of all of the earthier pleasures –
a glass of water, a book, a handshake, a look in the eyes,
a cuddle, at dawn, a song, a joke, or a poem,
a long conversation, a cry, some faith in your friends.
Ask not for justification, for there is no need.
We are great enough. This you can believe.

Cold Car in the Dawn

Each and every city morning
like countless fires extinguished falling
dark and letting darkness reign:
the people wake, in bursts, a flood
of living drowns the world again

Along the cold cracked-concrete roads
with cold-cracked paint, the living do
their to and fro about the earth
and driving quickly up and down –
each darkling dawn a swarming birth.

But in each cask, each bleary eye
sees dawning sun conduct the sky
in symphonies of light and shade
and sometimes from them tears are drawn
by dawnings from which days are made.

Though sufferers may infuse the world
in pleading song, and rightful hurl
sharp judgements out upon the head
of human shadows, enemies
who screaming wish the world were dead:

Shadows can vanish in the light
and leave the mind from time to time.
And wiping sand from out their eyes
we humans bear upon the sun
and bask resolving under skies