A.
And just what shall I manifest out of this damn fugue?
For I understand love's gyre is as a centrifuge

casting out suspended silt, preserving the liquid:
whirl me, blur all the stars, I am ready for the cure.

Always I would chug from the puncheon for drunkenness,
inviting night in that divine ecstatic fusion.

She comes as a nebulous light, never mind her name
once passion besets the brain: women are an excuse.

I did escape that addictiveness, I thought, but love
gathered me anyway snared with a soul of beauty.

In the garden I wander from herb to herb, sun-blind;
I know this place by its smells, its touch and soft music.

They are willing to be friends, which pleases my palate
but torments my hunger that can bear no substitutes.

Now one is kind again. She knows about romances
as if picturesque diseases, or a puzzle cube.

Have I learned a labyrinth in vain, that its twistings
map nothing realer than sex and the mild refusal?

She comes to me in a dream, saying: "Why be angry
when crossed by circumstance? Your will needed that rebuke."

Alone I climb to the treacherous top. Blazing white
and nothing I can parley with, up there; it's futile.

The woman I love would rather remain in shadows
where life is. O how I weary of chiaroscuro!

Perhaps only my languishing must perish. To meet
brings back the energy properly mine from durance.

In the garden we talk about everything but love.
Love outwits us, appearing in a thousand costumes.

The woman I love imagines she can call timeout
from the body's wars. --Yes, but not the soul's, worse nuisance.

We can distract ourselves from the promise all we want.
Who am I to lead past the Mysteries' vestibule?