Amores: Poems

THE quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping, Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame;Above them, exultant, the pee-wits are sweeping: They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadnesstheir screamings proclaim.Rabbits, handfuls of brown earth, lieLow-rounded on the mournful grass they have bittendown to the quick.Are they asleep?-Are they alive?-Now see, when IMove my arms the hill bursts and heaves under theirspurting kick.The common flaunts bravely; but below, from therushesCrowds of glittering king-cups surge to challenge theblossoming bushes;There the lazy streamlet pushesIts curious course mildly; here it wakes again, leaps, laughs, and gushes.Into a deep pond, an old sheep-dip, Dark, overgrown with willows, cool, with the brookebbing through so slow, Naked on the steep, soft lipOf the bank I stand watching my own white shadowquivering to and fro.What if the gorse flowers shrivelled and kissing were6lost?Without the pulsing waters, where were the marigoldsand the songs of the brook?If my veins and my breasts with love embossedWithered, my insolent soul would be gone like flowersthat the hot wind took.So my soul like a passionate woman turns, Filled with remorseful terror to the man she scorned, and her loveFor myself in my own eyes' laughter burns, Runs ecstatic over the pliant folds rippling down tomy belly from the breast-lights above.Over my sunlit skin the warm, clinging air, Rich with the songs of seven larks singing at once, goes kissing me glad.And the soul of the wind and my blood compareTheir wandering happiness, and the wind, wasted inliberty, drifts on and is sad.Oh but the water loves me and folds me, Plays with me, sways me, lifts me and sinks me asthough it were living blood, Blood of a heaving woman who holds me, Owning my supple body a rare glad thing,