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CENTAURS
‘I
remember many a time when lust
roared
in like centaurs. If there
was one place
where
life still picnicked childishly and nude
then
we would find it. Thunder
round a rock
like
a posse of Huns into that spread of limbs
of
innocent outing. Scatter
their braziers, wine-crocks,
fruit,
and tread the juice out of their males.
Just
one armful of their bare, rhythmic softness,
just
one whiff of their frightened and thrilled sweat,
and
we became destruction’s seed, our brains
night-time
forests and a murder of crows.
By
waist or hair, arm or haunch we dragged them.
Their
fear inflamed us and was their undoing;
and
later, on the lake’s far side, their sobs
held
us to their breasts with after-kisses
that
left us more four-footed than before.’
But
darling, there have been times, certain times,
when
we have been two centaurs from the start
and
all night’s forest screams were waterfalls.
Alan
Marshfield
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