Homage to Sextus Propertius -- P. J. Moriarty's Version

My desire does not cease. Its finger, obsessed,
     Accuses the noble face, like fierce Rome, of death.
And here I am, divided by what I might say,
     All Beginning, Finality, descends to Heart;
Never does devout constitution sustain love.
     Cynthia, never less, your pour-over in song like milk.
World grants us: we will not be quietly softened
     Nor will our likeness be possessed by a simple phrase.
Tendered we must know: Will we not break apart? A mystery
     Crushed poor Prometheus into a grain of sand?
I will not ease, I become flame: drawn, life ruins its path.
     Though many may tame its raging love.
None but the first long breath of a soul swells
     So immensely that it forms it own gravity.
So I make a portrait of its withering grace.
     As though no one has ever aspired to lament their Love:
So affirmed is the despondency held in the portrait’s heat,
     Its severity and nature cannot be recalled.
Yourself: a small picture of a world at its own end:
     Cynthia from the very beginning, Cynthia at the end.

-- P. J. Moriarty

 

Comments

[terrible writing]

This is the gayest self--righteous piece of garbage I have ever read

I bet this person comes from blue collar stock, yet wears fake glasses and pretends be an intellectual, all while never actually leaving their crappy liberal college to get a real job. My guess is everyone laughs at this clown. Just a guess

[The Best American Poetry]

The comment above strikes me as anti-intellectual, homophobic, needlessly personal and nasty. Other than that, I see no reason to protest a self-described expert -- it is not quite clear whether proponent or opponent -- in "terrible writing." -- DL