Treasure
 
                    1
A sensuous hoard. Each pearl in your bath
rushed to kiss your nipples. The quivering steam
caressed each curl by your face. The water
obscured your shape by its jealous ripples.
 
                    2
…Miserly, I’m counting my gold
surprised by the treasures I’ve left to hold –
  
I’m chasing a fragrance long since passed,
I’m tracing offences meant to last
 
and drinking once more sweet wine in bed
and blinking as sunrise paints us red –
 
                    3
The tears I withheld are still moist in my eyes.
My throat mutely grips, tightly holds all the words,
all the sighs and goodbyes by your gate and at stations
and streets for a day, for a week, from our lips.
 
But now it’s forever (you say). And already
I rummage in vain in my memory's jewel-box:
behold, a clever, pathetic endeavour
to rebuild your figure, to hold you again.
 
When they saw you, the colours would riot
and sometimes the ceiling would burst with your anguish.
And sometimes you would quietly slip
from your skin, and share the pain I was feeling.
 
                    4
I’m weighing my treasure, contemplating
the way love has taught us to penetrate
each other with such mastery –
 
But no-one can muster such mastery
pursuing abandoned pearls in the mist,
and you have retained your mystery.
 
                    5
Come, stranger, sit at my table – I’ve never
seen you in other rays of red.
Arrange again your wasting bed
for so much we have not tasted and tried
and so much we must have tried and missed…
Perhaps our lives are just beginning.
 
Thomas Land


If you have any thoughts on this poem, Thomas Land would be pleased to hear them.