New Song
By Devin Johnston
After William IX, Duke of Aquitaine
As sweetness flows through these new days,
the woods leaf out, and songbirds phrase
in neumes of roosted melody
incipits to a new song.
Then love should find lubricity
and quicken, having slept so long.
The bloodroot blossoms, well and good,
but I receive no word that would
set my troubled heart at ease,
nor could we turn our faces toward
the sun, and open by degrees,
unless we reach a clear accord.
And so our love goes, night and day:
it’s like the thorny hawthorn spray
that whips about in a bitter wind
from dusk to dawn, shellacked with sleet,
until the sun’s first rays ascend
through leaves and branches, spreading heat.
I have in mind one April morning
when she relented without warning,
relenting from her cold rebuff
in laughter, peals of happiness.
Sweet Christ, let me live long enough
to get my hands beneath her dress!
I hate the elevated talk
that disregards both root and stalk
and sets insipid pride above
vicissitudes of lust and strife.
Let others claim a higher love:
we’ve got the bread, we’ve got the knife.