RETURN OF THE GOAT SONG...

I.

Your belly is not like a heap of wheat,
Your breasts are not like twin roes by the streams.
But that's fine. I've had and enjoyed all that.
Your beauty lies in new parts, and within.

Most everything is different. I'm completely
Lost here where no thing is what it seems:
It's not just where the body hair and fat
Is placed -- it's all the glory held inside your skin.

And I am different, too, although not sweet,
Demure, polite, or silent [in your dreams!].
God has indeed made many mountains flat
And freed me to embrace what once was sin.

You say some things that shake me to the heart,
But then, you shook me from the very start.


II.

My love, you've lived alone so long your ways
Are set, if not exactly set in stone.
Still you make room for me and the disturbance
My mere presence means to every rule.

That makes me doubly grateful in these days,
When longing for you strikes me -- when alone,
I find that longing's power knows no curb --
And every thought of you becomes its fuel.

How I await the end of this sad phase,
Though it means risk to heart and head and bones.
The next will doubtless bring its own mad
Turbulence; together we'll survive its school.

There is no chance of glory without dangers:
The angels walk abroad, but so do strangers.
C