Saturday, March 21, 2009

"Oh but the water loves me and folds me"

















Over my sunlit skin the warm, clinging air,
Rich with the songs of seven larks singing at once, goes kissing me glad.
And the soul of the wind and my blood compare
Their wandering happiness, and the wind, wasted in liberty, drifts on and is sad.

Oh but the water loves me and folds me,
Plays with me, sways me, lifts me and sinks me as though it were living blood,
Blood of a heaving woman who holds me,
Owning my supple body a rare glad thing, supremely good.


From "The Wild Common" by D.H. Lawrence, 1921. Read the complete poem at Poetry Foundation.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

4 comments:

Flora said...

Wow! That is amazing. If only such sensuous abandon and love of the natural world were the norm in our society instead of the emotional denial, adolescent snickering about sex and masculine posturing that is all too common and expected among men. We are all the poorer for it.

jmcleod76 said...

Sexy poem. Rawr!

Anonymous said...

Happy equinox!

BitterGrace said...

Thanks, Margaret. Happy equinox to you. It certainly did make a pretty arrival hereabouts.

I'm not sure how Lawrence is regarded now, but in my undergrad days he was not very PC. But still, who could resist?