I WANT OF YOU

by: Michael Strange

      WANT of you not this intellectual passion
      Always consciously composing its code
      Of liberties! considerations!
      Nor this reasonable loftiness,
      Treating each circumstance with oratorical gestures
      Toward some invisible public.
      Nor do I exact this fraternal fairness
      In sexual emergency--
      Nor even this cerebral impartiality
      In passional disaster--
      Phew, such attitudes savouring to me
      Of affectation masking depleted instinct,
      Or of egomania parading as a new charity.
      Listen! I want your mouth whispering over my heart
      "This complete moment
      Is moulding us eternally together!"
      I want our limbs, twisted, luminous,
      Crushing the physical into spiritual invocation,
      Commingling! Ascending!
      Nor afterward any slamming down of the lid
      Upon emerging spirit.
      Since I desire that consummation become a beginning,
      A beginning, stammering our souls with tenderness,
      Inflating us with moods palpitating--
      Disconcerting--mysterious--as dreams--
      Moods confessional--adventurous,
      Flickering our fancy with spectre forms
      Triumphant--transcendent--angelic--
      Since I admonish consummation to become a beginning,
      And so mortal love, the legitimate mediator
      Between God and Man.

"I Want of You" is reprinted from Poems. Michael Strange. New York: Brentano's, 1919.

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