I
Forlorn in London with no Virginia
melancholy descends on me:
I miss when she folds a green shawl
around her shoulders like a peacock
preening her train of feathers.
Oh when I am old and dying, Virginia,
I wish you read Orlando aloud to me,
you my artichoke flower towering
among yellow dahlias,
my anchor entangled in gold nuggets
at the bottom of the sea:
endless stormy sea of delusion.
I touch the green raincoat, the brooch,
the hot water bottle you left(after love)
in my Pink Tower.
In this endless stormy sea of masquerade
you remain
as the brightest beacon...
...but I did leave Virginia standing
on her doorstep
in a misty London,
trying to open like a desert flower
under a cloudburst.
So there is blur on the edge of wisdom:
this poem.
There is a blur on the edge of this poem:
myself.
I am writing you now from Cairo or maybe Teheran?
or rather Beirut? Wherever but sipping
demijohns filled with Shiraz wine:
I definitely ignore where I am
when daydreaming of you.
II
Enisled on the land of our last hopes
you rumple my hair, knot my emerald pearls
dazzling into the gloom.
The silver fish of your soul
slipping through my fingers.
I in purple Turkish tunic
by the gas fire,
You in orange and black dress
and a straw hat
with feathers like Mercury's wings.
"Please come and bathe me in serenity again"
"Don't rumple the hair of Sybil,
oh Virginia, don't"
You, waving at the doorstep in blue apron
to my blue Austin going through the meadows
toward the lighthouse of your smile.
"Greece with you in May"
-I shouted
but I saw you no more that year...
"Please when you are in the South
think of me"
Isfahan with its blue domes
it is not more stunning
than your blue apron
waving adieu.
III
Forlorn in London with no Virginia,
she has kept me in thrall on my knees
kissing her ghost like a golden relic
in a Florentine church
"Fra Angelico, you remember,
painted on his knees"
London is too cold, full of funerals,
influenza, stray cats and floozies.
I long to be in Monk House,
near the bust of Venus in the garden
or sitting on the floor by you,
no undergarments,
flashing my legs
while Leonard guts the herrings
and plants hollyhocks.
Oh how I relish on this wanton lust
even at seeing the runs
and dirt of your stockings.
London smells of stale lipstick,
manure and petrol.
"Life is only a passing of phantoms,
a crowing of cocks"
you say while playing about my pearls
as a child with his marbles...
...but I only hear, across the marshes,
the heavenly sound
from harps made of cryshantemums.
