Ardor.

I


When into my vision
she drifts - my soul
shatters to a thousand
thousand splinters,
each breeding its own
desire to disenchant
me further still.

My fragile sense withers -

A Bathing Place - Albert Moore

weak as the aged
branch that has seen
a many hundred
autumns.
While my yearning
rises to inebriated
heights,

I struggle to conceal
pulsated clamors
from the journeying
breeze -

for only bawls;
my lyric in silence
stagnates
as the infernos of
my heart burn
visibly,
and my thoughts fall
as rain upon the
marshes beside the
Styx -
denied their
congregation.

My stare in blindness
- choked by the
vines of desire and
torn by the thorns
of truth - reveals the
weakness of my passion
as I drown in the
languor of the
pools of her
eyes.



II


How I long for
somnolence beneath
solitude and shadow
of an all enchanted
willow, the blanket
that smothers
all my strains,

neglects all futures
and eternities for
tranquil ignorance -

Water Willow - Dante Gabriel Rossetti

feeding the immediate
flame.
To bathe blankly
beneath its bosom,

welcome in my dreams
to flirt upon my
fancy - to climb with
them to places
mankind has seldom
seen  in lifetimes or
in Paradise.

Among the clouds where
torture's slain let my
piteous form be greeted
by a hope of
all gentility -
to gaze upon passed
sorrow's mourning archways
with nothing but
disdain.


© Cecil Field