And he praised his brain that had

Directed him the clever way

When he kissed her on the forehead

In the joyous month of May.

She the bad girl, he the dickhead

Branded on their brows they read:

It’s a mucky game we play.

HALF IN MY SLEEP . . .

Half in my sleep in the pale beginning light

Against your body, many a night: that dream.

Ghostly highways under evening-pale

Very cold skies. Pale winds. Crows

Screaming for food and in the night comes rain.

With clouds in the wind, years following on years

Your face washes away, my Bittersweet, again

And in the cold wind with a shock of fear I feel

Your body lightly, half in my sleep, in the beginning light

Still with a trace of bitterness in my brain.

THE DAYS OF ALL YOUR BITTERNESSES . . .

The days of all your bitternesses

Will soon be over now, my dear

Like those of our unheard-of kisses

Which all too soon have disappeared.

Soon life will give up all its substance

And death itself will lose its hurt

You’ll take the line of least resistance

And sleep in peace in the hallowed dirt.

ON VITALITY

1

The main thing is vitality

A slug of brandy, and you’re sorted

Any wench, law of causality

Must bend to vitality, even court it.

2

Women may lie in knots on your bed

Take your whip and not your morality!

Or do it outside, that’s just as good

As long as you have vitality.

3

Vitality will always ease

Your path with any dumb angel. Vitality.

She’ll see the Judgment and beg on her knees

For rites of bare legality.

4

Vitality can fully dispense

With soul or intellect

It’s more concerned with a sixth sense

And women you can disrespect.

5

Vitality couldn’t give a fig

For responsibility, consequences

Take Baal, for example, he was a pig

And a bundle of offences.

(So I pray to God, by night and day

For vi-tal-i-tay.)

THROUGH THE ROOM THE WILD WIND COMES . . .

Through the room the wild wind comes

As the child ate purple plums

Then she offered her pale self

To the pleasures of the flesh.

Showed him tactfully how to take it

First insisting he go naked.

Apricots as sweet as these

Can’t be fucked in dungarees.

And however wild our games were

Nothing was too much for her.

Afterwards she washed it nicely:

All just as it should by rights be.

DOWN IN THE WILLOW GROVE . . .

Down in the willow grove

Wind blowing wild

She, ’cause her mother called

Did it and smiled . . .

Wild the wind overhead

Clouds in the skies

She, ’cause it’s dark by now

Kept shut her eyes.

And ’cause the grass is wet

Cold are the skies

She, on a willow stump

Gave up her prize.

When the new moon hangs red

In willows wild:

She will float down the stream:

Virgin and child.