This Is My Beloved

Entry September 17
by Walter Benton

See, I alter nothing. This is you and I in dark-gray lead,
on plain white paper. No flattering
magenta colors. No accompaniment in minor key ~ or brilliant arpeggios.

Just sit as you are, or stand .... and do whatever you are doing, while
the kokak shutter winks you into permanence.
Just turn the last flight of stairway as I open the door ~ and say hello.

Just slip into your nightdress, stumble into bed,
say goodnight .... and go soft all over. Turn, drape yourself over me
like a lissom python, our smooth bodies touching everywhere.
Sleep rising from you lulls me like the sweet smoke of hashish.

Leave everything exactly as it is: the undone hair clouding the pillow
and the small ears lost snugly somewhere in the clouds. The little
blue veins under your breasts and the brown birth marks inside your thighs.
The bittersweet climbing the beech
and the partridge berry trailing on the ground.
The early crocuses and the second-flowering hawthorn.

You see, this needs no retouching. The colors are natural and the shape
universal. Therefore
I shall never forget you .... nor will your memory be ever free of me.
For your arms are my home ~ and my arms the circle you cannot leave,
however far you go.