14th
He’s Underlined My Favorite Sonnet!
Sonnet 4
Ah when you drift hover before you kiss
More my mouth yours now, lips grow more to mine
Teeth click, suddenly your tongue like a mulled wine
Slides fire, —- I wonder what the point of life is.
Do, down this night when I adore you, Lise,
So I forsake the blest assistant shine
Of deep-laid maps I made for summits, swine-
enchanted lover, loafing in the abyss?
Loaf hardly, while my nerves dance, while the gale
moans like your hair down here. But I lie still,
Strengthless and smiling under a maenad rule.
Whose limbs worked once, whose imagination’s grail
Many or some would nourish, must now I fill
My strength with desire, my cup with your tongue,
no more Melpomene’s, but Erato’s fool? . .
JOHN BERRYMAN