Desire

And you want to travel with her And you want to travel blind And you know that she will trust you For you’ve touched her perfect body with your mind.

Brooding on God, I may become a man. Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire; What burns me now? Desire, desire, desire.

Oh! Moon of Alabama We now must say good-bye We’ve lost our good old mama And must have whiskey Oh, you know why!

I burned my life, that I might find A passion wholly of the mind, Thought divorced from eye and bone, Ecstasy come to breath alone.

Why is it no one ever sent me yet One perfect limousine, do you suppose? Ah no, it’s always just my luck to get

But what are pity, conscience, or fear To the brazen pair, compared With the living sorcery Of their hot embraces?

Terminate torment Of love unsatisfied The greater torment Of love satisfied.

The greatest poverty is not to live In a physical world, to feel that one’s desire Is too difficult to tell from despair.

Far in the pillared dark Thrush music went— Almost like a call to come in To the dark and lament. But no, I was out for stars: I would not come in. I meant not even if asked, And I hadn’t been.

Now no joy but lacks salt That is not dashed with pain And weariness and fault; I crave the stain Of tears, the aftermark Of almost too much love, The sweet of bitter bark And burning clove.

Love at the lips was touch As sweet as I could bear; And once that seemed too much; I lived on air.

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

I’m tired of Love: I’m still more tired of Rhyme. But Money gives me pleasure all the time.

Hear me, ambitious souls, Sex is the curse of life!

Bird sighs for the air, Thought for I know not where, For the womb the seed sighs. Now sinks the same rest On mind, on nest, On straining thighs.

You think it horrible that lust and rage Should dance attention upon my old age; They were not such a plague when I was young; What else have I to spur me into song?

I pray—for fashion’s word is out And prayer comes round again— That I may seem, though I die old, A foolish, passionate man.

What were all the world’s alarms To mighty Paris when he found Sleep upon a golden bed That first dawn in Helen’s arms?

I had wild Jack for a lover.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.

The fascination of what’s difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart.

A fool there was and he made his prayer (Even as you and I!) To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair (We called her the woman who did not care) But the fool he called her his lady fair— (Even as you and I!)

I tasted—careless—then— I did not know the Wine Came once a World—Did you? Oh, had you told me so— This Thirst would blister—easier—now

I am she who adorn’d herself and folded her hair expectantly, My truant lover has come, and it is dark.