Read The Poetry of Sex for Free Online Page A

bed; no wonder
    When I think of you, as I do, each day and night, I think
    Of what you were thinking of, how you watched as I watched you,
    How as autumn ended, just before you left
    That night, noiseless, away with him for good,
    I came upon him at twilight in a clearing.
    After the weeks we’d mutely worked together,
    Till dark we rested in the deep cool grass without a word.
    While all the time I loved you, as I love you,
    He lay with me and he was satisfied,
    I lay with him and not for a minute thought
    Of how you watched through the screen door, but only
    How musky, how good he smelled, and his hand on my chest.



3
     
‘A NIGHT PICKED FROM A HUNDRED AND ONE’

Imperial
Don Paterson
    Is it normal to get this wet? Baby, I’m frightened –
    I covered her mouth with my own;
    she lay in my arms till the storm-window brightened
    and stood at our heads like a stone
    After months of jaw-jaw, determined that neither
    win ground, or be handed the edge,
    we gave ourselves up, one to the other
    like prisoners over a bridge
    and no trade was ever so fair or so tender;
    so where was the flaw in the plan,
    the night we lay down on the flag of surrender
    and woke on the flag of Japan

Viginty Alley
Tim Liardet
    I was thrown, you might say, on the mercy
    Of her knowledge. Were there less, there’d be plenty:
    Undo this, she softly cajoled, no, this.
    Miles away, her slant green eyes slid up
    To the contingencies of cloud ebbing over the sidings.
    When she wrote it there on the subway wall
    In an unbookish hand as deep red as Chianti
    She dropped, like she dropped her gaze, the r and i –
    X marks the spot. Here’s where the mammer’s boy
    Lost his viginty.
    It, whatever it was, indeed was lost
    Along with the gormless and the donkey-voiced,
    Along with all sense of ingenuous folly
    Once the chemicals started to boil in the pit.
    It was lost there, or left, or merely discarded
    Like creaky, unbroken shoes, like out-of-season holly.
    It was lost, or merely dumped
    Along with everything else no longer of use
    Down at the deep end of Viginty Alley.

Outside
Robert Frant
    I thought you’d stop my searching touch
    Although you wanted just as much
    To have me on this crowded route;
    Your denim skirt, my soft dark suit,
    But even though we could be seen
    I ached to feel myself between
    Your legs, to sense the moistness there
    For me if I would only dare.
    I slid your skirt above your hips,
    Your naked neck against my lips
    Then eased my hardness into you.
    A gasp, a moan, my hardness grew.
    The people never dropped their pace
    Not knowing that our close embrace
    Was hiding something known to just
    We two: our deep, impatient lust.

Amores 1.5
Ovid
    A hot afternoon: siesta-time. Exhausted,
        I lay sprawled across my bed.
    One window-shutter was closed, the other stood half-open,
        And the light came sifting through
    As it does in a wood. It recalled that crepuscular glow at sunset
        Or the trembling moment between darkness and dawn,
    Just right for a modest girl whose delicate bashfulness
        Needs some camouflage. And then –
    In stole Corinna, long hair tumbled about her
        Soft white throat, a rustle of summer skirts,
    Like some fabulous Eastern queen
en route
to her bridal-chamber –
        Or a top-line city call-girl, out on the job.
    I tore the dress off her – not that it really hid much,
        But all the same she struggled to keep it on:
    Yet her efforts were unconvincing, she seemed half-hearted –
        Inner self-betrayal made her give up.
    When at last she stood naked before me, not a stitch of clothing,
        I couldn’t fault her body at any point.
    Smooth shoulders, delectable arms (I saw, I touched them),
        Nipples inviting caresses, the flat
    Belly outlined beneath that flawless bosom,
        Exquisite curve of a hip, firm youthful thighs.
    But why catalogue details? Nothing came short of perfection,
        And I clasped her naked body close to mine.
    Fill