Geraldine Returned

Geraldine Returned

('Her lovely limbs did she undress
and lay down in her loveliness')
Coleridge: 'Christobel'
Rise up for me from your voluptuous depths,
Rise through the centuries in my dream;
Make ocean ripples with your thrusting limbs;
Suffuse the elements, flood all time
With breathy spirit youth!

Now seize me with your arms, eyes, lips and tongue
And be my dizzy charge, pour your volcano
Into my every muscle, force each cerebral cell
To embrace my every gland and tendon.

Oh Geraldine, my inner liquid fires
Have overwhlemed my mind -
Let me unrobe you - then can my body
Embrace your beauty, to be yours!

I grow in beauty as I breathe you
There in your glorious gown
Shimmering with your promises within.

But now the promise must emerge:
Oh Geraldine, it must be by your hands
Before mine burn in chaos!

Undress, my Gerladine, undress, undress!

As you disrobe,the world breathes fresh again -
New atmospheres and layers, purified, second filter
Of your pure body light - transform me
Into your mirror male of beauty.

I'll clinch your every part as it's revealed.

Let's plunge now, to find a new primeval start,
A word again.

We are the world, its light, its growth.


David Russell