Now Wake the Prowling Tigers – after reading ‘Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson

 

Now let me speak to you

                        of love,

the weight of it, ‘

of loves erased

                        where does it go, the love

of men, thrown

from the height of towers

                        and stoned,

those stamped with

triangled shame

                        then gassed?

 

Where are these men whose

vengeance terriers at our heels ?

Wake now, gather up your short lives

put on the skins of

                        prowling tigers

with fangs of knives,

face a love that could be death             

                        in masquerade ,

glide now in meteor-burst

leave shining furrows where

your lives might have been,

fold yourselves at last, my dears

and be lost in immortality