Pleasure me not, for love’s pleasure drained me
Deep as an artesian well;
The pitiless blood-letter veined me.
Long grew the parasite before its fill.
Lover, smile the other way, nor ply me with evil
Who am surfeited and taste the shadows of gray;
Nor sway me with promises to rouse my thirst
And fill me with that passion beyond lust;
Not romp my body in the wake of the mind’s play.
How tired, how enervated, how becalmed I am.
That island toward which I strove in my salt tides
Has drifted out beyond the listless swell and formed
A hostile continent. I am amorphous with all deflowered brides,
Who, with their floodgates sundered, drowned when they were stormed.
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From The Essential Ruth Stone by Ruth Stone, ed. Bianca Stone. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press.
