Venus’ Honeypots

My love, I’ve filled our bed with carnations.
Please tell me you recall?
The bunch that sat by your bedstead
the first night we made love.
I watched them as they drank the sun,
and you performed your toilet in
the tiny men’s en suite. It’s been years since
I’ve felt another woman’s touch,
my breasts against hers, so
that now the carnations
are even lovelier, knowing that you’ll
be here soon. My husband thinks I’ve
turned frigid, and takes it as a blessing.
He’s not been well since ‘93. But you
and me... for me, at least, are all that’s left
in Love’s yawning graveyard.

I know it’s sin. I know it’s so perverse
men hardly mention it, except
in bawdy jokes. Yet sinners know sinners,
better than the virtuous can sometimes
know themselves. We saw each other
and we knew, that day in Devon,
years ago, when we had sand and sea, and Time.
If Sapphic lust has doomed us since that day,
come to the bedchamber I’ve lain
with carnations, and give to me your pain,
so that for this weekend at least
I may store it with my corset and parasol.
Then all that will remain is our bodies,
your breasts, my breasts, your hips, my hips.
The honeypots of distant Venus brim
with Hell’s nectar. Satan’s flesh pots
are where such mockeries of union
belong. Yet what we understand as wrong
is wrought within us nonetheless,
the metal unrelieved by years.
To Venus, then, come float with me,
among the stars and cold recess,
we Sapphics cured with honeyed nakedness.