STILL
The children are sleeping
and the cows and chickens are sleeping,
and the grass itself
is sleeping.
The machines are off
and the neighbor's lights,
a half mile away, are out,
and the moon is hanging
like a powdered face
in a darkened room,
and the snow
is shining under stars
the way we are shining here
in our cold skins
under warm quilts.
We pull our shirts over our heads
and toss them to the floor
and the only thing grotesque
is the space through which
we stumble each night.
I roll to you and put my hand
on your skin. You shiver and smile,
"Cold. But not too cold.
Some cold I like."
And draw my hand closer.
I pull it away
and jam it in my armpit,
and while I wait for the blood
I look at you, admire your face,
your neck and breasts,
your belly and thighs,
the shadowy double of you
thrown by candlelight to the wall—
There is no season, no grass
gone brown, no cold,
and no one to say we are anything
but beautiful, swimming together
across the wide channel of night.
— David Romtvedt
from Some Church. © Milkweed Editions
All the passions are nothing else than different degrees
of heat and cold of the blood.
[Fr., Toutes les passions ne sout autre chose que les divers degres de la chaleur et de la froideur du sang.]
~ Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld
Love/Life Poems
