Nocturne

for S.C.

To hell with you, “noli me tangere”,
who with your beauty enclosed in machine
of such cutting-power as to stunt the lowliest . . .
you breathe in good air, breathe out subtle scorn.
For as if an Homerically lovely water maiden
were poured, through a trick in time, into my world
and overcoming the unbridgeable gap between us
her eyes saw with the virtue of my soul –
so I, mad at your pastimes, night after night
in a savage encounter with sleep, rail at you, need you,
hold an uncalendared meeting . . . hear the door slam
in your damned silvery lightness – and day after day
burn in your nearness, while your true softness of touch
hovers, evades me . . . kept for somebody else.