THE LOVE

Love is a canine breed,
a poodle, without doubt.
With a coiffed and curled mane,
A fluffy, dainty sprout.

On a leash it saunters by,
beside the blooms of Eden;
Baying only at behest,
cringing at the sound of our tread.

With raucous, rosy tones,
the coquettes prance and preen,
past vitreous swans on display,
and our alien feline dreams.

*

THE SPRING

Cupid, with wings askew,
trudges through the wood
his green galoshes caked with mud.

He gets stuck with his wings in pine tops
and swears, makes tugging
movements in his corset.

He sits down, panting,
wiping the sweat from his forehead
with a handful of bark.

Then he slowly dips
his arrows in the moss and
terrifyingly yanks off
his suspenders.

But the maidens, the maidens,
don bulletproof vests,
when, in spring’s early morn,
they drift through the wood,
bestowing us their fecundity,
a burden we bear with glee.

Martijn Benders, from: Karavanserai, 2008, Nieuw Amsterdam Publishers.
Available soon as part of my ‘Tract of the Sun’ collection.