A propos, I poem I wrote it must be 30 years ago, very Late Romantic, never
published. It takes an effort to remember the person who wrote it. As
usual, warning re: format distortions.
BRAHMS AND MARVELL
Brahms, we know, haunted bordellos, loved sopranos
and lady pianists, bathed
in post-coital sadness. Ich grolle nicht
wrote Schumann raving
while Brahms and Clara rolled in the next room. Marvell,
the scholars tell us, on the other hand,
died virginal his women
figures of speech. His verses
argue otherwise
his mourning nymph not marble
but flesh
quivering in the shock of loss a sexual loss. Or portraying his king as
rapist. Always
the awareness of pressure in his own groin
the garden itself
an orgy.
Two paradises 'twere in one
To live in paradise alone,
the passionate man's renunciation of passion for his self's sake. Brahms
is more explicit about his motives he writes to Clara
he shall never marry, his art requires it. Love
so comforting you lose yourself in it the self-absorbtion that the
act requires constantly
intruded upon by domestic necessity. Society
is all but rude
To this delicious solitude.
I keep hoping
for my own solution that
the love of life and its passing
can live together in my body with longing,
and with beauty,
who enters alone
like the moist girl from behind the curtains of my mind's castle the
constant
adulteress. I have seen her,
her feet approaching over the bare stones
hidden within me. How
to conduct my life
with such a secret?
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