Step into starlight, lovely and wild, lonely and longing, a woman, a child . . . Throw back drawn curtains, enter the night, dream of his...

Have you tasted the bitterness of tears of despair? Have you watched the sun sink through such pale, balmless air that your soul sought...

Will there be starlight tonight while she gathers damask and lilac and sweet-scented heathers? And will she find flowers, or will she...

Insurrection She has become as the night—listening for rumors of dawn—while the dew, glistening, reminds me of her, and the wind,...

When Pentheus [“grief’] went into the mountains in the garb of the baccae, his mother [Agave] and the other maenads, possessed by...

Water and Gold You came to me as rain breaks on the desert when every flower springs to life at once, but joy’s a wan illusion to the...

Southern Icarus Windborne, lover of heights, unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace, you climb, skittish kite . . . What do...

Immortal Aphrodite, throned in splendor! Wile-weaving daughter of Zeus, enchantress, and beguiler! I implore you, dread mistress,...

For George King In the whispering night, when the stars bend low till the hills ignite to a shining flame, when a shower of meteors...

... Among the shadows of the groaning elms, amid the darkening oaks, we fled ourselves ... ... Once there were paths that led to coracles...

Helen, bright accompaniment, accouterment of war as sure as all the polished swords of princes groomed to lie in mausoleums all eternity...

Love has a Southern flavor: honeydew, ripe cantaloupe, the honeysuckle’s spout we tilt to basking faces to breathe out the ordinary, and...

Here the hills are old and rolling carefully in their old age; on the horizon youthful mountains bathe themselves in windblown fountains...

Moments There were moments full of promise, like the petal-scented rainfall of early spring, when to hold you in my arms and to kiss...

Poetry, I found you where at last they chained and bound you; with devices all around you to torture and confound you, I found...

Come spring, the grand apple trees stand watered by a gushing river where the maidens’ uncut flowers shiver and the blossoming grape vine...