Poetry Returns

[greenstorm]

Portrait Number Five: Against A New York Summer

I'd walk her home after work
buying roses and talking of Bechsteins.
She was full of soul.
Her small room was gorged with heat
and there were no windows.
She'd take off everything
but her pants
and take the pins from her hair
throwing them on the floor
with a great noise.
Like Crete.
We wouldn't make love.
She'd get on the bed
with those nipples
and we'd lie
sweating
and talking of my best friend.
They were in love.
When I got quiet
she'd put on usually Debussy
and
leaning down to the small ribs
bite me.
Hard.

- Jack Gilbert

He said further “I relish the physical surface of a woman, but I am importantly haunted by the ghost inside,” in the introduction to his own poems in the 1983 volume Nineteen New American Poets of the Golden Gate. I think that is lovely.

Thanks, Greatpoets.