MRS PROTHEROE The Night Your Landlady Came To Your Room by Robert Davidson A loose gown in which her flesh swam free Fascinated Your eyes resting diffidently, the full white breasts The shadowed cleft Your mind searching the unknown Hesitated, resisted Locked within the closed circle of yourself. Broken into tears She moaned your name against your mouth Said her old man had deserted the year before. You saw Silver tears sliding down the sad moonlit face. She said you were too withdrawn within yourself = You kept to your room, too much alone, she said. And so lost Lying on your bed, reading Schopenhauer late at night You were reading everything yet could believe in nothing, you said. She clinging to you with her mouth Arousing. Inflaming flesh. You losing the will to resist You would solve the mystery of yourself, you thought As your bodies took the shapes of passion You would come out of yourself in this long waited moment. She searching your boy's body for the lost images of youth The skin stretching transparently on your ribs She making a moaning, loving sound While taking the taste of you with her tongue - And you holding tightly the muscles of her plump white thighs As interlocked her body became as one with yours. When you opened your eyes Your room. your books still preserved their apparent shapes Despite long shadows in pools of early morning light She was as a rock to which we cling, you thought She was the rock of love On which we all have founded, you further thought. And as you wandered deeper into yourself, no longer lost You felt you'd slithered down a solid slope. sensible Of a dream-time womb in smooth transparent skin While she lay prone and spent on you - And for a moment you felt as wise as God. Love? - an equation for two bodies - Or the subtler colloquy of disparate souls? Copyright 2005 http://www.robertdavidson.blogsource.com
I'm not a fan of poems where sex is involved, but this one handled it maturely and didn't go unnecessarily graphic. It's not hard to say it's quite well-written. Only thing I can say is.. instead of calling her a "rock," which I felt was not at all in-line with the poem, I would have used "cornerstone."
