12-07-2017, 11:34 AM
Beyond Love
If nature isn't a veterinarian, it's not a people doctor
with medications and social therapy;
this herbal remedy is just as much just an herb
as a sheep's anus is only that;
a veterinarian has remedies for animals,
for humans he has none.
We sit side by side, your bare thigh against my pants,
this subtle electric fire you only consider with a smile:
it would be so much easier if you were a man,
they've been playing this game for centuries;
fifteen years is nothing to a Frenchman in Algeria
or an old consumptive in Venice;
their secret goes beyond love.
There's too much bourgeois marriage in our climate
that tames our blood.
I'm old enough to be your father—
had I been so lucky at fifteen.
How many you've had already. . . .
How you girls' eyes squint and begin to smile like a surfer
when your lungs are swimming in smoke;
you wouldn't wet your lips if I were drowning in drink,
you say you can't trust yourself when you're drunk.
—What does that have to do with me?
My stomach is so big with drink,
I could also be your mother.
No friends, you say, you can't wait
to get away, into a college in a better place,
where there are people you can relate to;
all you know here are of mere acquaintance.
I wonder if you know how that makes me feel,
as smoke blends so into the commonplace we no longer notice it,
and if you did, how much you'd care.
Well I'm going, I say, if I don't get home
I'll be accused of being out with you . . .
You frown and say, I'll see you. . . . As though to say—Whoever you are.
And I disappear behind the tree,
where I've always been (and always will be),
until today.
If nature isn't a veterinarian, it's not a people doctor
with medications and social therapy;
this herbal remedy is just as much just an herb
as a sheep's anus is only that;
a veterinarian has remedies for animals,
for humans he has none.
We sit side by side, your bare thigh against my pants,
this subtle electric fire you only consider with a smile:
it would be so much easier if you were a man,
they've been playing this game for centuries;
fifteen years is nothing to a Frenchman in Algeria
or an old consumptive in Venice;
their secret goes beyond love.
There's too much bourgeois marriage in our climate
that tames our blood.
I'm old enough to be your father—
had I been so lucky at fifteen.
How many you've had already. . . .
How you girls' eyes squint and begin to smile like a surfer
when your lungs are swimming in smoke;
you wouldn't wet your lips if I were drowning in drink,
you say you can't trust yourself when you're drunk.
—What does that have to do with me?
My stomach is so big with drink,
I could also be your mother.
No friends, you say, you can't wait
to get away, into a college in a better place,
where there are people you can relate to;
all you know here are of mere acquaintance.
I wonder if you know how that makes me feel,
as smoke blends so into the commonplace we no longer notice it,
and if you did, how much you'd care.
Well I'm going, I say, if I don't get home
I'll be accused of being out with you . . .
You frown and say, I'll see you. . . . As though to say—Whoever you are.
And I disappear behind the tree,
where I've always been (and always will be),
until today.
