T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
A Song: For what have you sought my love
By Michael Strange (Blanche Oelrichs) (18901950)(From Poems, 1919) FOR what have you sought my love, | |
Along those flashing wastes of passion? | |
Who move so wearily as the dawn’s unwilling step | |
Over-stamped in ruins of unlimited woe. | |
O what crucifix you, tortured | 5 |
Into nailing yourself against? | |
That your arms are become so attenuate | |
As those stark supplicating limbs of nightmare. | |
I wonder, have you assaulted life in darkness | |
And whispering | 10 |
I need you so! oh let me— | |
Yet when the spear entering, nailing you | |
Into frantic submission, | |
You crying out from the very center nerve | |
Of such ecstasy, I have fear! | 15 |
Since you selling then into bondage | |
What you might surmise only— | |
And for the witchery of moments. | |
Since you denying of yourself | |
More than you could have known | 20 |
Before self-betrayal. | |
And all in order to induce | |
Those scarlet wings of appalling lips | |
To glisten, close, across your mouth. | |
Yet when this tease of pleasure | 25 |
Titillating curious truth-stained exclamations out of you | |
And their sense languishing mateless unanswered along the air— | |
Ah, then you turning to regard | |
The gracious youth of your sleeping love | |
Alongside of your waking, ageless, heart. | 30 |