When All Has Been Given

                                           and all taken

(and both have been taker and giver)

time’s womb is the room they wake in;

what bauble will it deliver?

Have charged poles, pronged and plussed,

uniting themselves in desire,

lost Venus’ cross, Mars’ arrow of lust:

smoke rings from the Phoenix fire?

Or popped to birth Donne’s hemispheres?

whose torrid equators might

merge in the flux of flea-bitten years

if not cooled by equilibrious sneers

congealing by polar night

to thicken a skin around captive fire

and drive an axis through poles of desire.