| T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22. | | | | Love-Songs | | By James Oppenheim (1882–1932) |
| | (From War and Laughter, 1916)
MY tiny hands not being able to weave a garland of the stars, | |
| I made curious songs for my beloved, | |
| To crown her with. | |
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| For it seemed to me that my beloved dwelt in Paradise, | |
| Somewhere with Beatrice of the Italian song, | 5 |
| And that a ring of stars would be a poor enough halo for her radiant head. | |
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| Ah, but thus I wronged my love for my beloved: | |
| For I made her a spirit, and left the greatest songs of all unsung: | |
| The true love-songs that a man sings with his lips, his eyes, his flesh: | |
| Not to a heavenly spirit, but to a human woman … | 10 |
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| So now I brush away Paradise and stars and curious songs like hindering cobwebs, | |
| And see that my beloved is a breathing and laughing and passionate body, | |
| And that the iris of her eyes is blue, and the pupils dilated and wonderfully deep, | |
| And that her lips are firm and moist and sweet, | |
| And her hands grasp tinglingly, | 15 |
| And the skin of her neck and shoulders is cool and fresh, | |
| And that there is a fragrance about her that is lovelier to me than meadows of sun-dried hay, | |
| And that her laughter is irresistible, | |
| And that she in my arms is as much of glory and ecstasy that a man may hold. | |
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| Wherefore Paradise is unnecessary, | 20 |
| And the flame of stars works no more transformations than the flame of her lips meeting mine, | |
| And the miracle of her actuality, her breathing flesh, and her contact with me, | |
| Is as great a miracle as space may produce, | |
| And so far as I am concerned, a greater. | | | | |
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