August Diptych

I.

Two lovers and the cherries and the game

They're playing with each other and the light

Of August—this is Augustmonth entire.

A game of pairs. First fingers and the lips:

And now her hand plays fisherman and plucks

Two cherries hung conjointly on the stem—

Her baited lure, her tackle and the line—

A ripple cast, alluring on the deep

And placid silent waters of his mouth

That nothing tell of what's lurking underneath:

That biting catch. The frenzying of teeth

Stripping the flesh and cartilage to bone:

The cherry-flesh shucked clean away from stone

To polished flint, he loads inside the sling:

His lips fall puckered silent as they aim

The bullet for a pot-shot at the bin—

That blazing helm, a panoply in bronze;

That wrathful gleams in arrogance and light—

And smacks it with a satisfying ping:

"Goliath's down!"—erupting in a cheer

And laughing fall to kissing once again.

II.

Of course their aim's not always true, and heaps

A cherry-mound all scattered round the bin,

But that's for then. For now there is the now

Then now and now, and all the nows safekept

Beside the distant tolling of the bell:

This now, she's playing Empress and bathes

In slatted streams of buttermilk and balms

Her skin in gleaming ivory and gold;

That paints the fruit that diadems her lips

Like rubies upon coral, red on red;

And then the nows, soft-dappled in the light,

Like girls at hopscotch, innocently skips

An iridescent laughter through the blinds,

And shifts the dancing colours of his eyes

From teal to ripened hazel-nuts in green...

And all the while, the steeple-bell still keeps

Its duty and its pealing on the hour—

But not the hours. Who's bothering to count?

No hours besides the hours and hours

The two of them, together in the now

As weightless as the cherry-stone in flight.

Last shot now. Now the copper of the bin

Glows peach and plum and cherry as the sun

Enveloping the eventide in red

Sinks burgundy and claret in the earth...

And gives a final blessing as it sinks—

The empty bowl, as empty as the hours,

Now brimming with gold and chrism in the light;

And winking off the syrup on their lips

Reminds them they have other fruit to taste...

And melting to the blackened soil of night

Leaves each to each; dissolved in their embrace

Together fall to kissing once again.