In the hearth of feeling

Rose with a heavy head of dreams
how love breeds how hate destroys

How blissful were those days of ignorance
or were they truly or were they even once ?

My bruised redemption welcomes the diffuse rapture
my brooding eyes fixed firmly on the horizon

of the undimmed beauty of her instrumental body
In love enough is never enough nor in the field

are the fresh and fragile daffodils ever capable
of carpeting an entire plot but form clusters

crowding the spaces the crocuses might have chosen
The vigours of nature are a marvel to behold

no flower withers but another follows suit
just as the ensemble singers’ voices vie

from branch to branch—my life was complete
before you came to complete it further

to add grain to the fortunes of my winter store
I was murmurless in unvanquished space

my days revolving with the easy accidents of life
but an orchid appears its petals bent on seduction

and the body in which my virtue lay gasps
at the subtle radiance of your skin

that stretches out before me intimate and unbound
O for the accuracy of angels that know and understand

the rise and fall of man in the circles of paradise
where falling blossoms may clot the light

Betrayal is a tongue that cannot tell—a string
that vibrates in the dull emptiness of deceit

Yet love knows no counterfeit and accepts no forfeit
its affinities unshifting amid the hostilities of time

John Lyons