PG

toi Pandore et Galatée
tu es ma fille et ma mère
créature et créatrice
la première et la dernière

Romance
i

Starlight on crystal
reflected eye to eye
heart-colored wine
in our communion cup
souls paused in flight
I to a bosom
you the sun
ii
Libidinal propinquity
a finger tensed in darkness
comparative anatomy
reveals the old disparity
a word-world vanishes
leaving a hint
of spring perfume

 
P to G
i
 

Sculpting not stone but spirit
I’ll mold your body’s delicate
perfection in soliciting
desire not wish-fulfilled

your eyes I dazzle to conceive
alight with azure promise of
reflected absolution
ii
 

Your mind I’ll make from dialogue; I’ll set
in dreaded stichomythia
the comic agon of our star-crossed souls
in roles played and reversed

by shadows followed fled
or hat-exchanging clowns
we’ll write each other’s story line by line
iii
 

Last I’ll imprint your memory
with garden walks and kisses
chocolates and sips of wine
laughter shared uncontrolled

body’s and mind’s caresses
sadness of youth
and tenderness of age

 
Symmetry
 

Though you in me belie
desire’s reflection
in my eye’s core you see
our garden portrait

beneath the unleaved now
before and after
interpenetrate

 
Spontaneity
we speak no vows
silence more than signs
befits our synchrony
no promises contract
worlds possible to words
the future to the perfect
in tacit terror
we unbound ascend
freedom’s degrees

 
L’école du regard
i

For you no book of verse invariant
each line by dialogue is recompensed
the interjection of our difference
never belies our eyes’ astonishment

scanning my songs of silence hear
how our two heartbeats are conjoint
in love’s eternal counterpoint
ii

The clockwork of complicity
tricks time into significance
an undetected gravity
curves space into scenicity

sun-centered at the altar
we burn from eye to eye with love’s
refracted specularity
iii

Your soul’s instant presence
to love’s true perception
not beauty but radiance
sun held in suspension

by your eyes’ double mimicry
in their sudden convergence
my mortal epiphany
iv

I drink the flower of your finitude
in the quiet anxiety of time
souls’ sympathetic resonance
deeper than viscera unblocks

the amniotic fluid of the eye
and all the waters of life
flow toward the central sea
v

Love’s final object
serene impresence
the shared stars recall
your blessed sunlight

in night’s awaiting
my unsacred words
only defer your grace

 
Love as function of despair

i

Our sacred sign is irony
of hard work without mystery
ringing our passage out and back
in mortal world-conformity

let your sweet breath survive
to waft the sands of entropy
from my encrypted memory

ii

we know together
ignoring separately
mutual frailty’s
infinite presence

time-stained existent’s
vulnerability
valence of Being

iii

For creatures born in paradox
love’s easier than significance
What grave could hold the holocaust
could common tenderness command

me make resection of my heart
that some immortal statue wear
your smile upon my sacrifice?

iv

A last conviction
upheld by imagery
my lover’s portrait
lives and never ages

a deviant harmony
preserves her repetition
in discontinuity

 
Cène
i

What sadness on the face of love
I see your eyes wet with desire
I hold your hands that grasp my hand
time passes and the lights come on
the plates are cleared from the white cloth

we shall never leave this place
altar of our hearts' sacrifice

ii
 

Three buttons on your yellow blouse
my paradise my trinity
of satin flesh and chastity

a tenderly unfolded cloth
covers the bread you share with me
we drink the wine that is our blood
commensals in eternity

Eric Gans / gans@humnet.ucla.edu
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