LOVE’S  PROMISE 

There is a fish in the sky with shining scales 
and a head of grey hair, hung black with snakes. 

My bosom is a room where two lovers meet. 
My knees are dog-nosed, like a true maiden. 

Red-berried and holy, my thighs are clean, 
new-lashed and alive with sinews of rain. 

Though barren as yet, without peas and cods, 
something within me is ploughing a fallow. 

Under my heart sleeps a mouldiwarp 
and the red dead-nettle is between my eyes. 

White snowdrops crowd my open lips 
and hazel catkins hang from my paps. 

From screffs of skin a little wren peeps out. 
Blackbirds’ wings beat in my lungs. 

A lark leaps twittering from my hair . . . 
and O, my lover, when you fold me so, 

I swoon in the bliss of your embrace 
with breast-soft robins on my burning cheeks!

                     (1945)