If you should choose to kiss, and kissing, turn

Redoubling, consuming in abandon

Then would love, in loving you, prove wanton

While terrestrial forests willingly burn.

Our lips in flames no waters extinguish

Until all love’s knowledge itself unlearn;

Our pupils for that flaming lesson yearn

Which bequeaths the heart unlessened anguish.

So loving you, I leave to turn and choose

In naughtiness regained when all is ash

To profit from the loss with naught to lose.

Thus eyes that gaze, unchastened, toward the lash

Must lose, in turn what all the world had gained . . .

Read half-coherent verse—and think half-brained.

faces in the crowd:
pedals on a wet black bike . . .
where is my bike lock?