PoetryRepairShop -- Contemporary International Poetry 

The secret of all love poetry is simply that
there never have been words for what bodies can say.
What our bodies have done and will do
can only be told with our kisses.

But, faced with this terrible fact,
the scribbler cannot keep silent.
Drowning in love with you
I sing although no one can hear me
and perish the sooner for singing.

He can step into Shakespeare's chorus
and descant on Constancy or Time.
But our thoughts are in bed before us
and your wisdom needs nothing from mine.

He can trot out tralation or trope,
put to sea on her body like Donne.
We plot our planet without rhumb or scope,
and, basking, never need to take the sun.

His fluency fairly flummoxed,
punchinello can try to amuse.
You are smiling over my shoulder
at this poem that wears odd shoes.

He can look somewhere else instead,
At Cavafy's bed in the sunlight,
At your wineglass next to the curtain,
At the cat lying here beside us.

But the post-modern poet for choice
turns his lyric around on itself;
though mere text cannot suspect
that our next fuck will force it to flee
like a shade from the sword of Odysseus,
or like

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