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Pauline Rowe

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The Love Song of Violet Trefusis

At first I watched her slowly.
Wordlessly, she taught me how to talk.
At last I sculpted, tasted, touched
her body in the dark.
I know I’m bad like the apple.
Tainted, bad.
I thought her Galahad.
How sad, how sad.
I cut my hair, green hair
pretend she’s there
and now, for comfort, kiss the air.

Beyond the smoke I felt those lovely eyes
darken with the secret of surprise.
The truest thing I’ve ever done
the ease with which I told your easy lies.

For years I watched her arching neck
(perhaps you think it wrong of me to tell),
nourished her, suckled her, watched her break.
With ash upon my lips I go to hell.

I supped the coolest dark, so deep and long,
longed to taste her with a traitor’s tongue.

I waken to the ringing of a distant bell.
Wrong, you think, to tell?
I might as well.
I might as well.

Adultery is murder of a kind.
I’ve spent my adulthood half mad, half blind.
I long to see her waiting at my door.
This is not the way to be.
It really isn’t me.
I used to run my busy life
so effortlessly.

Here I sit and watch the light,
feel the noise of breath,
dream the life that I must reach.

I have heard the whispering of husbands
each to each.

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