Sonnet Cycle: Eromenoi

I.

My wish for you is that you would permit
my hands and eyes to show you secret Earth,
that I might watch as you discover birth
is death and learn to take delight in it,
to know again through you the joy of wit,
to take again from learning subtle mirth.
I lead you now to virtue, and the worth
of it will grow in you as you are fit—

but such delights are only in a heart
untouched by any sin that stops a prayer,
and I will never do for any thus,
for what you give me when I play this part
holds much more worth than even twice our share
of pure Philosophia holds for us.


II.

In whatsoever guise you may appear—
a love-struck girl, a scholar, a tattoo,
or the petals, pink and red and clear,
of the magnolia—I long for you.

In whose-so-ever voice you might début—
the novelist’s, the archangel’s, the news’—
I hear but little else; all sounds accrue
your meaning. But forgive me; you suffuse.

As soon as I can grasp the thing you choose
to make your home, you slip away, and I
am left with heaps of pink and clear red bruise,
a silly boy, a stupid girl, all shy,

expecting I’ll uphold the vows I swore
to you in them. It’s you whom I adore.


III.

When I do a thing that’s moral,
I wonder why I do that deed.
Is it for the victor’s laurel,
a morsel thrown to my own creed?
Is it novelty? For kindness
is as new and cruel as blindness.
Or can it be that in my heart
there is an honest urge to start
doing godlike deeds? No, rather,
I think it must be childlike joy
in having weapons to deploy:
favorite rôles of heroes. Gather
and call me cold, for I love best
the faces that I manifest.


IV.

Let’s say a man is under such a curse
that he must feed on cherries or receive
a most horrific death—or even worse,
feel pain no kind of doctor can relieve.

And let’s say, too—if this we can conceive—
that there are only two small cherries grown
in all the wicked world. Now, I believe
he’ll eat them, flesh and stem and stone.

If there were only one thing left unknown,
one pure, new thing, I know that I’d consume
it whole. The hunger that I would postpone
does struggle to relent and to resume.

I swallow meats too quickly to condemn;
I never taste the merest scent of them.


V.

Knowledge makes one cease adoring,
for knowing well cuts high from low,
and the stain is past ignoring.
Yet love is the desire to know.
Touching something perfect only
will despoil it, yet the lonely
and sinful heart desires to touch;
it begs for nothing half so much.
Is this paradox too ugly,
too cruel and desperate a sport
for gods in heaven to support?
Yet the gods, who sit so smugly,
are victims of the supple bow
of Love and the Desire to Know.


VI.

Is it not right that we desire the Good?
Our souls, made incomplete, beg to be filled.
The Good is True is Beautiful and spilled
on Earth by God, and you, small angel, could
compete with Earth for beauty. If you would,
you might outshine all monuments we build.
And listen: I am true and iron-willed,
the truest you will ever understand.

Then let us blend like watercolor paints
that bleed upon the page—for every hue
is chromaticity of one lone shade—
and let your tutor’s otiose restraints
be thrown away; for all that he may do
will not cause Fortune to be disobeyed.