Love's Alba Against Time, Times's Against Love

Time counts the lovers’ strokes,
Each, stringing his knots along endeavour.
Devil - what have I to say to thee?
Wij beminnen elkander...
we love, love, we love on, in dutch, so.
Who says unsays much later;
Who all unsays has all said once.
O n c e ? Is that treachery or is it time?

De fil en aiguille, au fil de l’heure...
Filles et fils de l’heure, écoutez:
“Il y eut une fois”...Ay, that’s my enemy,
“Once a time”, “ago”,
And as Aragon has it
“Aima, ai-ma” -
You need no other histories.

So in the blue room
What’s mine’s yours, ours, in fief holden
For that himself Time is;
So it’s not “you and I”, it’s Time’s sport...

Time’s foe, my friend,
Gin, the white king -
In his ermines lives possibility,
His card-houses are my Spanish castles
To which the thread of Ariadne is
What will have been.

Time like a Mexican, a mask on a desert;
The desert full of sacrificial round-stones well-blooded,
Not seen, sensed only, tenants of the long unfinished poem -
Better a stroph or two in honour of the white king:
Oh gin, white king... oh what a lordly lover..
Making much of nothing...wrap oh wrap me into your ermines.....

And here’s your shaving-water and your shoe-trees,
Braces and pommatum and your watch and key chains,
Also nine o’clock, sir, all safe sir -
but not your lover, sir -

(1929)