Lovers By The Ice-Age Tarn

 

Lovers by the ice-age tarn

locked within the season’s frame

tender to the ancient sun

all their urgent naked claim:

 

"Until the climate takes my eyes,

sun is darkened with its spores,

and all the twisted ammonites

turn to brittle amber tears,

 

bend me by the golden ice,

tip me to reflected stars;

here where winter’s snowy lace,

Venus whitened, red with Mars,

 

cusps the cuddled frozen eye

grip me like infinity."

He, curled above her effortlessly

melts upon the purity.

 

"Where the snow-thrilled continent,

all its queuing blinded hills,

skips the white hare to its heart

flashes burning icicles,

 

glacier-prisoned, iced in light,

I instance the blue weight,

valley-pinioned, through the least

curvings of landscape burst."

 

Cast in untemperatured January,

their ages warming embryo,

the two are liquid eye to eye:

one is tarn and one is sky.